Sawyer & Co | Britt, Su-Jin

Sawyer was about to contribute to the man’s response when he felt a presence behind him, followed by a female voice. An eccentric scent wafted off her, like perhaps she’d mixed up a bunch of cologne and perfume bottles in some sort of rogue adult science project. It was very distinct, but oddly pleasant in a way he couldn’t explain. He turned to face her, only to have his hat taken off his head. She ruffled his fluffy strawberry-blond hair and placed the hat on her own head, finding a place in the little group. Nash couldn’t help but watch it go down with the most amused expression on his face, his brother somewhere between awestruck and lovestruck. His brother was so easily beguiled by women, falling captive to their charms. It seemed like all they needed was a pulse and the second they let out a breath he was offering them something he didn’t have to give. Sawyer had been this gullible for as long as Nash knew him, and he wished he could say it was his brother’s only downfall. Except everything seemed to be. He was the kind of guy that identified trouble and ran towards it. Nash had always used Sawyer’s actions as an example of what not to do.

“Here, sit, we can make room,” Nash offered, gesturing to a seat beside him. “Though I think Sawyer would prefer it if you just sat in his lap.” Willa nearly choked on her water, then fell into a series of giggles and coughs as a result. She had been so silent through the whole thing up until Nash had made that comment.

“I wouldn’t be opposed,” Sawyer trailed off, studying the goddess of a woman that was gallivanting around in his hat. “What are you doing later tonight? Or right now. Or any time. I’m planning on going bar-hopping, I wanna get a feel of the local culture.”

“Or the local booze,” Willa muttered, smirking. “Don’t think he’s asking you out or anything, he’s in a loving relationship with vodka.” She and Nash exchanged a disbelieving, amused look at their brother’s antics.

“Hey Sawyer, hey buddy? What’s this nice woman’s name? That’d be a good place to start.”

“Yeah, in case you want to engrave it on the engagement ring.”

“Will you two shut your mouths?” He softened his expression, smiling softly at Britt. “I’m sorry about them. My name’s Sawyer, who’re you? And when’re you free? I was serious about that whole bar-hopping thing.”

Willa nudged Silas, gesturing towards HP and Heidi who looked largely confused, or maybe just extremely uncomfortable. “What do you think they’re thinking right now,” she whispered to him.

Diego | Devyn, Tryst

[Devyn]: hey g

[Devyn]: where are you

[Devyn]: i’m bored

Diego slid the texts off his screen, shutting his phone off and glancing at the palomino gelding that was walking carefully behind him. He could deal with Devyn later, she’d been especially clingy lately. She hadn’t been like that when they went to Aurelisz, she’d been cool. Really cool. Now she bothered him more than he had the energy to accept.

He was busy. Katrina had given him half the barn to hack that day, or so it felt. He wasn’t even that good of a rider. She was working on him, but his only job really was to warm up or cool down whoever Katrina was assigned at the walk and sometimes the trot. She was the only equestrian in their family, and from what he knew, she was a pretty good one. Their older sister had at one point been dating a showjumper who apparently was big news of some kind, but that was quite a few years ago now. He was too young to remember.

That left him. He liked soccer, lacrosse, obstacle racing, things of that nature. He wasn’t very interested in being here but it was a solid job and he needed one until he could figure out what exactly he wanted to do with his life. He still had dreams of becoming a professional soccer player, but his coach advised him that he should pursue soccer on a collegiate level to get noticed. He didn’t have the money for college, and he surely wasn’t decided on a major or a career path. So, here he was.

As they approached one of the lit-up practice arenas adjacent the indoor, Diego felt Midas start to tense up and pin his ears, acting aggressively. Katrina told him to make sure he didn’t ride this horse with other horses present, so he assumed that meant that there was a horse in this arena. He started to turn to go, but something felt off. His suspicions were confirmed when he spotted a bay gelding without a rider standing in the corner of one of the arenas. He didn’t see the rider at first.

“Anyone over here?” He called out, getting out his phone to dial Katrina’s number to see if she could get help with this situation.

Rena | Alex

The droning of the television was almost enough to prevent Rena from hearing the sound of the door click, trying to be opened from the outside. Already on edge, left to her own devices to let her mind wander back down old paths, she jumped out of bed, heart racing. She just stood there, deathly quiet. Her brain replayed the image of getting abducted on repeat, as it had been doing for an hour or so now, but it was in the third person unlike when it actually happened. It was worse, seeing herself walking, knowing what was about to happen. Doubts started to race through her mind now, elevating her heart rate. Did Viktor do what he had died to? What if her captor was back? What if she was going to die this time without Viktor there to save her? Tears streamed down her face. She considered texting someone for help, but who? Why bother? She was alone, as she always had been. She’d done every hard thing alone, she didn’t need anyone and she didn’t have anyone to rely on. If she was gone, would anyone even notice her absence?

With shallow, gasping breaths, Rena tried to keep herself calm. A knock sounded at the door again, she jumped. She breathed a big sigh of relief at the rhythm, the number, the pattern. Alex. She hastily wiped every tear from her face, looked in the mirror, smoothed her clothing over, and gave every impression of remaining composed. Still, she opened the door on the slightest crack, her brown eyes doe-like and terrified. She looked around him before opening the door all the way because the next irrational fear that manifested was that her captor had taken Alex hostage in order to bait her to open the door. He was alone, though, and she breathed a big sigh of relief, hoping she didn’t look as traumatized as she felt when she opened the door. He didn’t need to see that, no one did. It wasn’t cute.

This was the first time she had opened the door for anyone all day. She’d heard many knocks on her door, wanting to check on her, but fear had gotten in the way. That, or she simply had no desire to go through the motions with person after person. She didn’t have the energy to be strong for the entire world, only for the select few she needed to be strong for. She wasn’t exactly sure if Alex fit into that group or not yet. He didn’t fit into any of the circles in the venn diagram of people in her life, he wasn’t even on the page. Her mind was in too much of a blur to try and organize him, she was numb and dizzy and incapable of seeing up from down. Still, she’d opened the door for him. She continued to ask herself why though she knew the answer.

"I don't have your number." He looked exactly the way he always did when he found his way to her at this time of night. Not that she had many experiences to go off of, just a drunken wedding night and a hallway conversation. Still, he looked vulnerable in a way she couldn’t place. His eyes were everywhere, his body language was screaming of panic, of escape, he wanted to run away. Not from her, though. Perhaps that was why she hadn’t pushed him away when she wasn’t apathetic--she’d watched it happen more than once. A single touch from her seemed to ripple through him and calm the seas of his mind. Now that she wasn’t feeling anything, that only made her want to push him away more. That was way too much power to wield, it was a lot of responsibility.

“Oh, oh, yeah,” she nodded softly, leaning against the door with her arms crossed. Was that all? That wasn’t all. Her brain shifted between posing the thought as a question and a statement. Alex wasn’t the kind of guy who was known to risk facing the consequences of getting caught in the girl’s dorms after hours for ten meaningless little numbers. “Here, let me write them down.”

Leaving him in the doorway, she scribbled her phone number onto a post-it note and returned in a matter of seconds, placing it in his hand. Her gaze fell to his wrist, which was bleeding enough to leave little trails of blood falling down towards his palm. “You’re bleeding,” she said it gently, feeling as though he was only two seconds from bolting at every moment. Against her better judgement, against her exhaustion, against her fear, against her apathy, against every piece of her feeling completely disconnected from him and everyone else on planet earth, she muttered five more words she almost meant. “Come in, I’ll help you.” Then she added a few more, trying to comfort him if that was even possible in this state. She wanted to feel them, she didn’t want to feel numb. She didn’t want to feel like a fraud. “We don’t have to talk about it, I just--I can make it less obvious.”

She gently led him in, gesturing to the empty bed across from hers as she rifled through a drawer filled with medical supplies designed to minimize bleeding. She’d acquired quite a few with her condition, which were extremely convenient in this situation. “It’s just me tonight, so you don’t have to worry about that. You’re probably better off here than you are roaming the hallways.” She sat down beside him, taking his arm in her hand gently. She moved his jacket aside and slid his sleeve up as gently as she could, studying the layers and layers of scar tissue that lined his arm. It went up further than she had expected it to, it wasn’t going to be the five-minute fix she had expected. She hadn’t even seen the other arm yet, and she was fairly sure it was going to look identical to this one.

“Do you remember anything about that night we got drunk at the wedding?” She left out the second part, the thing she was thinking. The night I got abducted and the fabric of our lives was changed forever? She had taken to cleaning up the blood with a damp cloth, replying to every little flinch with choruses of ‘i’msorryi’msorryi’msorry’ as if the phrase was just one, long, apologetic word. Sometimes she would throw in an ‘i know’ or something else of the sort, but she didn’t stop working to clean him up. There was no judgement, no negativity, just a soft acceptance and the quietest, most subtle sense of gratitude that he was allowing her to see his wounds without running away. “I only really remember the way I felt. But, apparently drunk Rena was unresolved with something we talked about. She left me a note saying something about you identifying things with colors and how I should ask you what color Hugo is? I don’t remember much of that, so if it’s totally confusing just forget I asked.” She smiled up at him softly, her eyes meeting his for a flicker of a moment before falling back to his arm. She finished getting all of the blood away and getting it dry again. None of the cuts were actively bleeding anymore, by some act of God. Or maybe just a seasoned hemophilic. “I would offer to wrap it, but I’m guessing you’d just rip it off anyway and I managed to stop the bleeding, so I’m just going to stop there.” She carefully slid his sleeve back down, feeling the way he reacted to her touch. Even in apathy, it was a rather satisfying sensation. She got up, rinsed the cloth, then came back to his other side. “Let me see this one now.”

She pulled that sleeve up as gently and lovingly as she had done the other, removing the blood from his appendage with the utmost of patience. She seemed perfectly content to care for his wounds, to care for him. Even feeling absolutely nothing, even at her lowest low, it was just instinctual to love him in that way. It felt natural.

With each as equally fluent in silence as the other, a comfortable, quiet, sleepy, peaceful atmosphere came over the room. She felt his gaze fall on her every now and again, and as much as the Rena who was fully capable of feeling every emotion would have been dying to get inside his brain, this one was perfectly content to keep doctoring away at his arm thoughtlessly. Her brain was blank, not thinking. Normally it was filled with a trillion thoughts that caused her to be eternally uncomfortable and on edge. She was quiet, comfortable, still. Either his flinching stopped bothering her after a while or he’d stopped flinching. Finally, she got every minute little incision to stop bleeding, and just as she had done the other one, she dried it and rolled his sleeve back down. Wordlessly, she put everything back and rinsed the cloth in the sink once more, unsure of what exactly she should say or do. He looked terrible in the most objective way possible and she knew he wasn’t going to get any rest if he went back to his empty dorm. Having him here was better than being alone, but if she drew attention to it she thought he’d leave. Silently, she resumed her position beside him, allowing him the control of deciding whether to stay or go. She didn’t want him to think that she wanted or needed him to stay, even if she knew somewhere deep down that the room’s energy had changed completely since he’d stepped foot inside.

I don't know how I feel about this, but the chances of a rewrite is very, very unlikely.

Alexander Littlewood | Rena

"I fell."

Alex couldn't meet her gaze. Even to his own ears, the explanation sounded false - and he was experienced at lying to himself. The lie was implausible - no accidental slip would be so dramatic as to leave his arms in the tatters they were now. And the years of built-up scarring were too old, too thick to have come from one simple mistake. Mistake. Wasn't that what everything was, when it came down to it? A long string of misfortunes, accidents, until enough time had passed for it to be called a lifespan. But was his comment a lie? He had fallen. He was constantly in the process of falling further down the cliff he’d created himself. The only difference between the truth and his words was the fact that it wasn’t completely accidental. There was an element of chance in what was happening now - whatever that was, he didn’t want to give it the complement of a name - but it had begun as an entirely purposeful, driven decision. The word in itself, falling, sounded like a mistake. There was nothing unplanned about this, though. It couldn’t be called an active decision, but it had been just that for long enough before, that it was a subconscious action. Instinct, if he could waste such a voluminous word on that. His own body telling him what to do. Wasn’t that justifiable?

The words weren't to try to persuade her, but rather to persuade himself. Of what, he was still undecided. All he knew is that he needed to prove something, not to Rena but to himself, that he was still himself. That he was still strong enough to attempt at hiding his faults, even if he failed completely; that he still held a distrust of vulnerability; that as much as he wanted to bare his damage to the person who he, most likely falsely, believed he could trust, he still didn't want to take the risk. It felt unimaginable to willingly show her his scars. Literally, in this scenario. He wasn’t ashamed, of course he wasn’t. They were the other side of him, the side that was constantly begging for more attention and was slowly becoming more and more of him than before. They were the side that wasn’t supposed to be shown. He was under no illusion that he was invincible, but purposefully telling someone that went against his nature. They were the side that fought with its dual twin, that would never settle for anything less than oblivion. They were ugly, they were reminders of a past he wanted to forget. There was no valid reason, no reason at all, that he wanted to uncover them. But he was already unravelling. How was this supposed to make a difference? He was completely capable of destroying himself without the added help of unnecessary vulnerability - he wasn’t sure whether he was using this as an argument for or against following Rena.

Less obvious. That was what he wanted, surely? Hide it, push it under the rug for the umpteenth time, act as if everything was fine when it was closer to the opposite. Alex let her lead him in, although every instinct in him was screaming not to. Naturally, he ignored them - though there was nothing natural about his response. His limbs felt like lead, as if he were wading through water instead of walking on land. Everything was so much more difficult than it needed to be. Two steps, inside the door. He couldn’t decide whether it was easier to keep his eyes on Rena or look everywhere but her figure. Both were painful, and so he settled for ignoring his vision and any stimuli related to it. Three more, pretending to slowly sit down on the bed when all he wanted to do was collapse. Collapse, curl into a ball, close his eyes until he believed in his other side, and fall into nothingness. That wasn’t an option yet.

He waited for the flinch, the wince, the usual reaction on the rare occasions someone managed to catch a glimpse of the marred skin. It was expected, and so when she barely changed her expression at the sight he was undecided whether to feel comforted or nothing at all. Instead, her inspection was entirely emotionless. He let himself slowly sink down, gradually releasing the tension. The detachment was more alleviating than any fuss or worry had ever been. No hastily-spoken words that were supposed to sound concerned ever made a difference, and the lack thereof was peaceful. There was no need to defend himself, defend whatever this was, or create equally hasty explanations for something he couldn’t find words to describe. He never could, really. Words had a habit of failing him.

Alex tried not to flinch every time her hand touched him, even if he largely failed at the task. “It’s fine.” It was partially the pain, ignorant of how tender she made her touch, and partially the panic that was filling him with every second he stayed there. It screamed to run, to cover up not only the visible wounds on his arm but also his heart. He was endangered, unprotected by everything he’d worked so hard to gain. They were useless. The effort, the time, the pain he’d constructed the cage with. Pointless. Nothing had prepared him for the very thing it was supposed to: trust.

He clung to her voice. “Colours?” His pause was punctuated by the sharp intake of breath in the silence. Quiet, Alex. “Oh. That.” Another hesitation, but this time he had no excuse of pain to explain it. He wanted to smile, he should have smiled, but all that came out was a weak movement of his mouth that barely resembled its counterpart. “Light green. Not hunter, not lime, but still with a yellow hint.” This time, he stopped himself from going on. A flat colour was enough, and he couldn’t dredge up the energy to describe anything more.

She was right, he could acknowledge that much. There was little chance that it would stay intact for more than the night, and even that felt unlikely. There was an itch beneath his skin, phantom from his physical body but too present in his mind. There was no avoiding it; her handiwork was precious, fragile, but if he somehow left his arms alone it would be somewhere else. Once it had begun, the deluge was impossible to stop. Sleep was irrelevant, nightmare-ish, and even though he knew it was irrational there was no way he was staying in that room for long enough to fall asleep.

By the time the other arm had been seen to, the conversation had drifted into silence. Was he supposed to go? Rena had offered no body language he could guess from, as motionless as she’d been for the entire time. There was no chance of any peace if he left, whether it was to the dorm or wherever else he landed on the property. If he had the need for space, it wasn’t even unlikely that he’d walk somewhere, anywhere, wherever the road led to in a few hours’ walking. There was no obvious request to leave, was there? He glanced at Rena, who had settled beside him, as if to search for an answer. Of course he couldn’t stay - he’d already stripped himself to pieces, and this wasn’t going to be beneficial in any way. But another, more insistent voice rang. It was calm, peaceful even, and found little resistance. Stay. For a minute, for a single moment. Stay.

His body relaxed once it had come to a decision. A few minutes, that was all. A momentary respite, and then he would leave. He was almost definitely being cumbersome, filling the time she’d most likely meticulously planned out. He’d interrupted her from something, whatever that had been, with a reason that barely deserved that status and a need to look into someone’s eyes and know that they were there. Was that so unnecessary? Yes. No. He was unnecessary, his presence was unnecessary, and he was slowly coming to terms with the fact that it didn’t terrify him as much as it should. Nothing was needed, in its truest sense. That statement was simultaneously comforting and ostracizing.

Was he supposed to say something? Up until then, the silence had been tranquil, almost drowsy, but with the lack of immediate thoughts to fill his mind his attention was directed elsewhere. The agitation returned, the need to either run until his legs gave out or fold himself into the tightest ball possible. Anything but sit in stifling silence that was the furthest thing from peace. Or rather, peace was the furthest thing from everything he did, everything he’d ever done, probably most things he was still going to do. Peace was an illusion, if he wanted to be honest. His eyes, which had been alternating between Rena and the opposite wall, were now flung around the room until it came to a rest on her again. Was he staring? Yes. There was something in his momentary halt that screamed the vulnerability he was trying so hard to hide, and almost immediately he wanted to pull his gaze away. It scampered around the room, too fast to be peaceful and frantically searching for something, anything, that he could focus on other than this world in his head. It’s fine it’s fine I’m fine. A deep breath that caught in his throat, and his heart rate that was already racing didn’t take well to this turn of events. Almost unconsciously, he seized his wrist. He wouldn’t do anything, he was better than this, he couldn’t do anything, and everything was falling apart. It took everything remaining to stay upright, to choke back the spiral he was already in. Too late. This was the worst possible place for this to happen. Why hadn’t he left? Was there still a part of him that thought that if he was around someone else, his need for outward resilience would overrule this otherness, this impulse of another kind? You were better than this. The past tense of his internal monologue stung more than it should have. Still, the presence of an emotion other than panic was progress. A step in a direction, but he was still undecided whether it was the right one. Did that even exist? No. Nothing did, at least not at this moment. His nihilistic side - did he have a different one? - was the strongest one in this scenario.

Alex dragged his eyes upwards, until they met Rena’s forcefully - too forcefully, you should mask it better than this. She was so still, but something in the lack of emotion made him think that it would take only one wrong move to shatter her. There was no obvious sign of the fragility, but it was still unmistakably there. “So.” His voice betrayed him by shaking, even with that single syllable, but he still needed to break the silence. He needed to carry on. And yet he couldn’t, by a medley of his apparent inability to breathe properly, the rising weight on his chest, and the need to say something more - more what, he wanted to ask - than whatever could ever leave his mouth.

Louis Wright | Brielle, Dublin, Blair

“I believe I recall seeing you as being among Reggie’s friends at one point. I never came over to introduce myself, however.”

Now that he said that, he could distinctly recall her face among the others. The moment he had spotted Reggie with them, he had done a one-eighty and left – mainly so that he wouldn’t get pummelled in a flurry of rage. Despite Reggie’s wiry frame, he had a mean ability to kick ass – almost exclusively his. But then again, no one else had the same genius brain like himself. In that situation, he had decided to insert a chocolate powder-filled bag into their shower drain, with the idea that when someone did shower, the water would come back out, and it would come out looking like filthy drain water.

Now, as it turned out, Reggie had been the one to get caught out by the prank, because Louis’ phone had been buzzing with angry messages and voicemails. Angry was actually a very placid adjective. Bloody furious would have been more accurate. But it had been totally worth it in his own mind. And he would do it again if it he had the option to. But perhaps, the reason wasn’t exactly one that Brielle would appreciate. She seemed to be more of a practical sort of humour, whereas he didn’t mind stooping to carry out ridiculous ploys.

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance. The name’s Louis.” Watching the other drown her shot, he played around with his, more hesitant to take it. “I’m a hundred percent German, but without the alcohol tolerance, believe it or not.” It wasn’t something he was embarrassed about, but it did make for awkward dinners where he would end up being the only person who couldn’t keep up with the drinks. “I would take a guess that you must be the French one of the group. Either that, or Norwegian.”

As it turned out, she was French, but she did not express the typical accent of one. He would have never guessed she was foreign, if he had never heard a word about her before. The conversation continued on for a good time, until the guests began leaving in little groups. They ended up taking a small stroll and swapping phone numbers. For once in his life, he saved a person by their actual name, rather than some unusual nickname that had basically no meaning. If anyone saw his contacts list, they would think he was always drunk when he saved the names. Guy who tripped, Long Hair, Cat-Murderer, Doesn’t like me, Not my ex, but my friend’s friend’s, that was the short of names that popped up. At times, if they hadn’t talked in a while, he would have to go into the text messages to figure out who exactly was that person. But it made life so much more interesting. But he didn’t know how he felt about saving her as Brielle. Weird.

---

As of recently, things had really blown up on the estate, sending everything into a mix of chaos. Someone stabbed, someone kidnapped, someone dead, and to top that, all the news agencies seemed to be unable to leave the courtyard at all hours of the day. It was a nuisance to be honest, because all the work had become twice as hard when the horses got agitated and there was no space for neither the horses nor the humans to get around. The only private, quiet place had been the dorms. But it all meant he hadn’t gotten to really hang out with anyone. Reggie had been offline and his door kept locked, except for when his new roommate came in and out.

Missing social company, he was currently debating where or not to ring Dublin up. He hadn’t seen his pal in weeks and didn’t even know how the other was getting on. It was an odd hour to call at, but he figured the other wasn’t someone who really kept to the social conformity of bedtime. Not that he himself as really keeping to it right now. “Eh!” Giving up on debating the idea, he decided to go for it. No harm in that. If he didn’t pick up, then he could go bother the other in his own dorm room. Which room was his? Louis was almost certain he didn’t have a roommate, so it would be one of the latter rooms. He wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon, so he would have plenty of time to bother the other.

Dublin | M: Blair, Louis

A disturbingly violent flinch overtook Dublin at the woman's entrance. Suspicious, even. His breaths felt more like desperate wheezes at this point, though they were dead silent, as if teasing an incoming darkness. He hardly understood when she spoke, both the fault of the dazed drunkenness and that intense strike of fear he was scrambling to settle. 'Are you okay'. Am I okay?

He clearly tried his best to speak back, but he couldn't find himself. A flow of stuttering ensued before he simply gave up, burying his face and a stream of tears into his hands, attempting to force himself to hold back any words or noises for a long, uncomfortable pause. Why was that always the answer? Just pause, turn everyone off. It never helped, why did he keep trying?

"No... No, no... Don't... Fuck. Eugh, what you said-.. You were gonna-.. Do... No. Nope." It was awfully pitiful. He assumed he'd made good sense, having tried his absolute best, even revealing his face again in some sort of fake confidence. But it was so clunky. The last eon of crying was somewhat audible in his voice, mostly in the effect the torment of his shaking inflicted. "Do-- do you.. D-.. Do..... Mmm.." He fell into an empty, painful chuckle, shoving his face in his hands once again, this time slowly falling onto his side, curling up loosely as another depressed river drained from his eyes. "Nooo..."

On the floor, Dublin was surrounded by his tossed and turned bottles, hardly any of the contents remaining. It was incredible that he'd held on so long. Still conscious, and yet to have puked. The nausea was so deeply rooted and pounding, but after these last few weeks, he was used to it as an everyday problem. It'd yet to have won completely. Yet. Completely. It was learning how to take over with time.

At this point, his phone started chiming an incoming call. But he couldn't recognize it at all. To him, some loud, scary noise was surrounding him, and it needed to go away. So. Damn. Loud. His head had already been spinning, but this sent him into an even larger, more disorienting dizzy spell. Was the strange woman making the sound? Maybe she wasn't actually a woman. Some evil hairless Sasquatch making her war cry. Was this what death sounds like? "What.. Saaay....."

After seemingly trying to hide in his jacket hood, he realized the tone was familiar. He still wasn't exactly sure what it was, but if he knew it, it couldn't be death, at least. Probably. Or maybe it was, and he'd heard it in one of those awful reoccurring dreams of his. That was equally as plausible, apparently. Either way, the demon sounded like it was in his pocket. He couldn't really feel his hands anymore, nor see what he was doing, so he ended up hitting plenty of things he didn't mean to, including Blair's leg, trying to reach for his pocket. Aha! There it is! Oh, look, the monster glows..?

"You-- bitch." His words were drawn out and dizzy, of course, glaring at the royally smashed phone screen like a disapproving parent. When did the ringtone get so loud? This was just plain unnecessary. Well then, time to turn the bloody thing off. Dublin accepted the call but stayed dead silent, not really realizing through his headache that this was, well, a call. Eventually it registered, after much confusion from the other end of the line. "Oh."

Dublin tried to heave himself up off the ground to a sitting position, feeling a giant wave of stabbing sickness worse than he'd ever felt clawing it's way up from the depths of his guts. But he failed repetitively. His vision was much too fogged and spinny to be able to read the blob which was the contact name on his phone, so when he squeaked out a sorrow-stuffed, "Heyy.. Person," he truly had no idea who he was addressing on the line. "Wait a-- min--.. Minute."

And, there he went. After trying to sit up again, he fell into Blair dry-heaving, eyes wide in horrified agony and entire body consumed by giant shakes and flinches. She was still here? Holy shit. Had she been talking to him? Hadn't they been here all year? Now he really couldn't breath. The sudden war for a slight pinch of air felt as if his stomach was trying to claw its way into his throat. Now his entire self voilently convulsed into an actual stream of vomit, completely liquid after having refused to eat for days. Most of it was on the floor, some on Blair and him. Nothing had ever hurt more than this. It felt like his soul was ripping out of his body. He fell back into the ocean of intense, nonstop crying from before, the jerks it caused doing nothing to help his suffering.

Aggressive hyperventilation suffocating him, he wriggled away from a highly disgusted Blair and smacked back down to the ground next to his phone. He could hear it was Louis now, whatever it was he was saying. Dublin couldn't focus enough to tell. When he wasn't engulfed by the pain and terror and sickness, he had only one other thought hopping around his head, and that's what escaped between what could hardly be considered breaths.

"I, fucking looove-- you. Haaa." Oh no. Why would he say that? Of all things, that? It was so much easier to tell himself he hated everyone than it was to accept rejection when his love for each person was so disgustingly intense. They all definitely hated him, he couldn't say he loved them. Louis definitely hated him now after hearing that. The last straw. What if he took it the wrong way? Was it the wrong way? He's so niiice to meeee. He thought it silently, but let out some split second giggle. After all this alcohol, he didn't know.

"Heyy, d-.. Dooo... Do you know, where. Where. I am? Looouiee??? Oh fuck." And, another dumb question in the books, he started puking again.