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The route to Noelle’s room is one of muscle memory.
Kris finds this out sluggishly, as they’d been, unfortunately, dragging their feet the entire way over. It was no fault of their own, and rather, the fault of the sudden, gaping hollow of their chest.
It felt strange. They thought this as they mounted the gate, as they swiftly plopped themself on the path opposite. It felt strange to have no pulse, no obvious thrumming in their ears when they doubled over and gulped in lungfuls of air.
There was no warmth in the panting. They raised a hand to hover over their lips, as if to check. Fruitless, sisyphean.
They knew the answer. It took them even longer to scale the tree directly opposite Noelle’s window.
A few minutes, and they’d finally twisted their body to fit on the branch. They remembered it to be thicker, a little more accomodating, but who knows how much they’ve changed? In the past 5 years, in the past week?
It takes another minute or so for their eyes to adjust and to, promptly, realise that Noelle is not in her room. Her computer is on, the background flicking through the default photos, before settling, for maybe an odd amount of time, on older pictures.
Maybe Kris is focusing too hard. The pictures with Dess cropped out, or conveniently covered by Noelle’s pencil pot, seem to linger longer upon the screen.
If the soul was still housed within them, at that moment, they think they would’ve ripped it out again. Allow the sudden tear of power, heat, to surge across their body. A distraction.
Maybe they’d step on it again, to compensate.
They sit on the tree for a few minutes more, nonetheless, still catching their breath. Air rasps in their lungs, warm and fragmenting pain in the familiar way of when they’d chase Noelle with a bug as kids, before suddenly doubling over. Monsters were faster. Noelle was always faster.
(They were pretty sure she did track now. They didn’t trust their mind enough to dwell on that memory, fact. Whatever it was.)
The pain branched a little further, nestling in the core of their chest. It seemed to trace an absence, there, trailing along the telltale emblem of romance that should be there. The romance that wasn’t.
They tugged a little at their collar, and allowed themself to fall off the tree.
Landing was easy, the pain wasn’t. A sharp stab to their side hugged them the entire minute it took them to round the house and find the back porch. It was needling, and they gripped at it senselessly.
A leaf was strewn in their hair and, upon spotting Noelle’s hunched, not-quite shaking figure, they swatted at it.
What they saw hurt, and what they saw was little.
Noelle was cupping her muzzle, and Kris could see the small, red glow of her nose, as she cowered from the cold.
She’d always been excessively accustomed to it, stupidly used to the gust of frost when she and Kris trekked to school together. While the human would shiver, tuck their hands within their sleeves, Noelle would hardly turn to look at them.
When she did, pity was quick to dawn her features, and she’d always grasp at their hands, let them feel the fur lining her palms, the lighter smatter of it within.
Now, their hands flexed uselessly around the air. If they stilled long enough, maybe they could feel that fur along their digits again, and maybe they could ignore the small, slight prick of when the thorn dusted over their prints.
They shivered. Noelle seemed cold, her hands were shaking in the unnoticeable way that static shifts. If you look close enough, it’s so obvious you can’t help but kick yourself for it.
Kris wonders if Noelle has half the mind to even retain the idea of being embarrassed, right now. They feel bad when the answer comes to them. No, she doesn’t. They feel worse when they trudge over, small litterings of leaves cramping their path, announcing their presence.
Despite this, Noelle barely stirs. They watch the flick of her ear in acknowledgement, feeling an astounding wave of deja vu hit them.
Tears well behind their eyes, and they nudge Noelle’s shoulder softly. The movement’s more accidental, than anything else, the result of a sudden, inexplicable urge to touch her and the subsequent spike of guilt that caused their hand to skew, miss the target of the dip in her collarbone.
Instead, they half-hit her shoulder, and she turns to them belatedly. A moment after their own, humiliating one.
“Kris. You can sit, you know?”
They fidget for a beat, fingers circling their ring finger, staring at hers. The thorn there, the divot of her skin as it swallows the prick of wood.
Something sick kicks up in their throat. Kris sits with a sway, almost crashing into Noelle again. She barely notices, and, instead, she returns Kris’ anxieties in the form of twisting the thorn.
It’s a slow, infinitesimal movement. Hardly there. Static. Kris watches it, the franticness that trembles along Noelle’s fingers when they slip and the thorn sinks a little deeper.
She makes no hiss, no sign of pain, but Kris sees the surge of wetness in her eyes, the small click when her hooves adjust and touch, legs twisting up and together.
Her body seems stupidly small behind them, gathered haphazardly, as if she’s merely a litter of leaves. Waiting to be blown away.
(Kris restricts their breathing, slightly, as if to protect her. It’s a little late, it’s a little selfish.)
The air is silent, there’s something salty upon it. Kris thinks it might be their tears, hers, or something carried off the surf of the lake. They’ve never known much about geography, or the like, but it seems plausible. Susie would think so.
Noelle shifts, and her shoulder pushes against Kris’. It takes the human a second to realise she’s leaning against them.
They speak, finally, softly, “I’m sorry.”
With an air of arrogant hesitance, they reach for her finger, the ring housed within it. She turns away.
“What for? Faha.”
“The… the ring, Noelle.”
Her name is akin to a prayer as it tumbles out their front teeth, tuneless. It’s pained and tinged with a late, late guilt. Desperately, they repeat it beneath their breath, grasping at her hand.
They only realise their tears when Noelle pushes their hand away, turning to them completely. She cups their cheek with a sickening ease, and her thumb swipes over the arc of their cheekbone as casually as the tug of a hand to cross the road fully, maybe, or the simple cushioning of a corner as you pass, or as someone emerges from beneath a table.
It’s sick, sick, sick. Kris feels it rise in their throat.
They’re all too weak to protest, and have half a mind to ask Noelle to press her palm up against the dip of their chest, feeling the absence of a pulse. An excuse. They suddenly, pathetically want her to know of it, to know of their reasoning. Their body’s betrayal.
It seems her’s does, too, though, before they can even breathe a whisper of their indulgent fantasy, her fingers tightening, eyes scanning the push and pull of flesh upon Kris’ face when she leans in closer.
Kris is crying. It’s such a late discovery that it takes them a moment further to feel the hotness the tears have tracked beyond their chin, the welling of salt along the swell of their nose, their lips. Is that what that salt upon their tongue had been, not the lake, but rather, their own undoing?
Noelle swipes the tears away, carefully. Her smile is small and slow, hardly bright. It’s as mute as the sun covered in the horizon, obscured by the puffs of clouds it watches.
She’s so close, and Kris can still see the moment a tear dips a little too close to her finger. They watch it fall along it, suddenly rounding the wound of their bond. The thorn shifts, as if making room for the salt to nestle in.
Her wince is small, minute. There’s the slight frown that pulls her brows together, and it seems more a result of guilt than pain. She hates to show it, the way the tear moves and blooms pain beneath her skin. Their infection, her allowance. She seems ashamed.
Kris' mouth twists down and they wrench themself backward, pushing at Noelle’s wrist, moving it upward a little in their excitement. Tears stream looser, now, hot and heavy and they feel them flick off when their head swivels to the side. To the house.
Noelle lets them, that’s the worst part.
“Kris,” a beat, she follows their gaze to the door, the light flickering. It’s white and lathes the two of them and it gives the moment the same sort of quality you’d find within a dream. “Nobody’s home. Well, they never are …”
She turns to Kris, raises her hand as if to cradle them again. In response, Kris loosely grabs Noelle's wrist, seeing the growing wreck of her finger, the twitch that spasms through the entire appendage when their breath strays a little too close.
Something harsh pulls at them, then. Warm and thorny, it settles in their stomach.
Kris leans down, imperceptibly, and kisses the ring.
Their own hand has moved upward to cusp her pulse.
It’s a mere brush of lips. Hesitant, lovesick, in the way a first kiss is. They reason that it is, in a way, holding the same intimacy as the clumsy press of lips beneath a slide, or the grasp of hands on a walk home.
Their breath stirs the wood, and there’s a slight pang within their skull when they retract.
The movement ends there. A weakness loosens their spine and, instead of leaving like they should, they press their temple against her knuckles.
It doesn’t end. They cry, and cry, and cry, over her hand. She speaks something muted. Their head nuzzles deeper against her, as if to ignore her existence entirely, apart from the open and sudden anchoring of her contact.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” They speak against it.
And when they move away, they see her fur is stained a little darker. Their breathing quickens, more so when she flips her hand, fingers coming against Kris’ lips, and the point of their nose.
Travelling upward, she cradles their cheek again, both of them now, lifting Kris’ face ever so slightly.
“It’s okay, Kris. It’s okay,” she repeats, quicker and quicker. A mantra, a prayer, their face merely an extension of her, another instrument of her devotion. Kris inhales quickly, air catching in the mucus built up within their nose, they almost choke on it. On their disgust, their misery.
“I’ll be okay. You … you did this, you know? I’m glad. I’m stronger now,” a swipe of her finger again, a digit trailing the curve beneath their eye, “It’s because of you. I … faha, thank you.”
Something crumples her brows together, creases just a little under her eyes, “Kris, are you listening? Please.”
The slow movement of her face stumps them, moves them stock-still. She leans in and her lips brush Kris’. Inexplicable, unnoticeable.
It’s static. They choke on their tears, the wetness mapping their face, making hot the swell beneath their lips, the seam of the latter. When they try to breathe, to gulp in needed air, all they taste is her, her, her, and the salt of their guilt.
The guilt she can’t seem to feel. Refuses to.
A thought, a need, comes to them. They need to stifle it, and their head tilts ever so slightly. They wish to give her an outlet, something to push her melancholy into. Kris can see in the small downturn of Noelle’s brows that she feels it.
Yet, she’s scared.
Another thought comes to them, then, quicker than the last. She’s scared of them.
“You’ve changed, Kris… but. But not enough to love me back, huh?”
Abruptly, Noelle is crying too, palms pushing frantically against her own cheeks, tears clotting like blood along the heels of her hand. It takes her a moment to stop, a sudden grasp of Kris’ hand along the hollow of her pulse.
They feel it stuttering, a staccato of pain when they grab awkwardly and a tear of her own descends along the ring. They’re wed now, in a sick, intimate way, Kris thinks.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s stupid. I’m supposed to be stronger and … it’s still— I still— Kris, can’t you say it again?”
The latter’s lips separate with a dry click, throat bobbing, “What?”
“You know. What you said earlier. Something to, faha, stop me. Stop these thoughts. You know, Kris.”
Kris stalls. Their pulse, hypothetical, spikes. Noelle must feel it, see it in the twist of their mouth, because she frowns again, allowing her hand to shift down and for her fingers to swallow Kris’.
The thorn presses against them. “It’d just be easier, wouldn’t it? If I could be like you,”
Her head shakes slowly, Kris watches in mute terror, “If I could change like you have. Angel, I’m sorry, Kris. I’m so sorry. I’m trying.”
Kris surges forward, hand slipping from Noelle’s to hold her face. Their tears seem to mix, then, with hers. To muddle. Intimacy, they think, so small and so harmful to even attempt at catching that it’s static.
They speak, high and warbled, thick with the wetness of their tears, “It’s not me. Noelle, I’m sorry. It’s fine, it really is. Just, please— please, Noelle, forgive me.”
It takes a moment for the words to register to themself. It’s hardly legible, something you can decipher. They see it in Noelle’s cracking expression, the smile that blooms.
She's misheard.
“You’re mean, Kris,” She laughs, Kris feels it in the tremble of their ribs, “Really mean. Even in a dream, even with something like this.”
The accusation is lost on the taper of a laugh, the bubble of giddiness that twirls in her chest. Along her pulse. Kris can feel it.
It’s as if their body swallows it, because they can feel the warmness, now, in the slots between their ribs, riding along the jagged lines that lattice their wrists. It hurts, it hurts so much and it feels like a stitch. Like a kiddish hurt. Like everything else Noelle instills in them.
“Noelle—”
She retracts herself, scrubbing at her face. Her fur is a little matted, and Kris can’t bring themself to dab at it, even minutely. Their chest stutters, wrapping around breaths it can’t hold.
They can feel it now, the absence of their soul, as palpable as the hotness lining their features, the wet along their lips, the salt burdening their sinful tongue.
The latter lolls behind their teeth, uselessly, now, pressing against the ridges of their molars, the sharp, monster-like canines near the front. The result of dysphoria, they wonder quietly on it, feeling the clumsy carve along the incisors. It hurts, and they press harder.
Noelle stands, they grasp at her wrist. She’s quick to escape that, even, in a way she is to throw herself into anything else. To throw herself into Kris.
“Please—”
“It’s okay, Kris. Seriously. Just get some sleep— right? I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Her eyes linger upon them for a moment too long, and they stand, hands cupping their own face.
They’re cold, stupidly so, and they already know how their pallor must appear. The slight green that must be painted along their cheek now. The sickness already burrowed behind their eyes, spreading out, branching. They feel it when they frown, and when they speak around newly-shed tears.
“Right— right,” a stall, a pause, and they repeat the words they’ve spoken so many times before, the ones a juvenile playmaker they once shared a body with was drilled into speaking, “I’m sorry, Noelle. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
It feels a world away, and Kris feels similar when Noelle smiles, opening the door with a click, frost clinging to the hem of her pants, Kris’ eyes dip far enough to know, suddenly and irrefutably insecure.
“It’s okay. I already said so, silly.”
Her voice is too thick with tears for them to believe that.
The door shuts, they raise a hand to brush, hover, over their staining lips. Featherlight, they feel, desperately, for where her lips lay, no matter how tentative.
And, it’s ironic, they think, turning with the steadiness of a drinker, the way they can only love her in that childish, self-seeking way of days past, while she seems to only love them fully, soul and all, sickness and all. It’s unfair, and it’s funny. They laugh to themself the entire walk home, breaths tapering into light, unsteady chuckles, in heed of their breathlessness.
They can barely stand straight, walk cohesively. Yet, they still have enough strength to think of her and restrain from dropping to the floor definitely.