South's Writing Dump.

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“J, I’ve been thinking. We talk about absolutely everything, and there’s been something on my mind, but I’m not overly comfortable talking about it even though it’s positively ridiculous for me to be embarrassed in the slightest, after all, I’m a maturing young lady and… Are you even listening to me?”

Silence. At that moment, I don’t hear Ophelia’s voice, not enough to make any sense it got so bad today that i ended up taking my meds because everything was just rushing together and i couldn’t handle it so i knocked back one of those little white pills and now i feel awful because everything is slow and i can only focus on one thing at a time through this heavy sort of fog of the words, too preoccupied with laying on my stomach with a pen in my hand, sprawled out across her bedroom floor as I make feeble attempts to put my English essay together in a way that won’t earn me my umpteenth failing grade of the semester. Maybe I’m a typical hormonal sixteen-year-old and I only think that the world’s out to get me, but I think it’s far more likely that Speks is just an asshole who enjoys flunking me at every possible opportunity.

Conspiracy or no, though, I’ve got to at least scrape a C on this beast of a literary analysis (how the hell am I supposed to analyze the depth and significance of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky when half of the damned poem is made-up nonsense? Speks is after my grade with claws out and teeth bared, I’m telling you) if I want to stand a chance at passing the class, and it’s a mix of the horrific nightmare of sitting through another year in a dimly-lit classroom that reeks of cigarette smoke, listening to repeated mantras of Wheaton, you irritating little cretin, settle down or I’ll chuck you in detention so fast your head’ll spin and the affects of my medication that keeps me absorbed in my notebook, perpetuating the steady stream of absolute bullshit scrawling its way across the pristine paper in my woefully messy penmanship.

The Hidden Depth and Significance of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky
Jace Wheaton
Period 4

The nonsense words in the poem are representative of society’s oppression of things that are not considered the social norm

Carroll was going for an easy, lighthearted approach in his writing, and

The poem is an allegory, with the Vorpal sword representing education and enlightenment, while the Jabberwocky represents ignorance, a monster shrouded in nonsense words and other various things that make no sense

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Dude, there is no deeper meaning to this crap. Lewis Carroll was high off his ass and put a pen to paper, and this is what happened. Hate to burst your oversized philosophical bubble, but I’d honestly rather write down my real analysis of the poem than spend an entire paper spouting off a bunch of nonsense that is just as ridiculous as this stupid excuse for literature.

THE END

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“Jace?”

“Yeah, I completely agree with you. You’re right. Mmhm.”

“Jace Vincent Wheaton, you listen to me this instant!” The thinly-veiled thunder in Ophelia’s voice is enough to pull my sluggish focus away from my paper and onto the frustrated expression she’s always hated not being heard and i guess i can relate because i always feel like i’ve got so much to say but the world just doesn’t want to listen making its way across my best friend’s face. While this place, my sanctuary, will never change (I’m sure this room will always be the same with the frilly covers on her bed and the stuffed animals jammed into every nook and cranny and the faint outlines of the stars on her ceiling that will blaze to life at the simple flick of a light switch), I’ve begun to notice little differences in the girl who inhabits it. Ophelia’s finally begun to shoot up in height, almost catching up to my not-that-impressive five-foot-eight in a matter of months, growing into those willowy limbs that always seemed to be miles ahead of her at long last. She’s just now exiting that physical stage of middle-school awkwardness that plagues everyone at some point in their tweens, and at fourteen, she’s starting to show little hints of what she’ll look like as an adult.

Her features are more defined, elegant cheekbones, full lips, all of that Capitol model foolishness that Dev looks through her imported magazines and pines for day in and day out. Ophelia’s pretty, I think, not for the first time, but the deadly sort of indignation rippling its way across her face is enough to chase the thought from my head as fear for my own safety nips at its heels. Attempting to flash a winning smile in her direction and balking when it fails to soften the lines of her face, I reach for the glass of soda that sits in a precarious stance on top of my pile of homework, intending to take a large gulp in an effort to drown myself my uneasiness (she can smell it. I know she can. She’s like a damned jungle cat). “Sorry, Pheels. I’m all drugged up today, and this essay’s a monster. What were you saying?”

“I was going to ask you if you’ve ever kissed a girl.”

I choke on my soda, spraying carbonated liquid all over my pathetic attempt at an essay (no great loss anyway) and sputtering incoherently. “Wh-what? Have I… I… wh-why would you… I don’t…”

Her eyebrow arches in response, skepticism etching its way into the aura that I’ve always been able to read effortlessly. “You seem flustered. So was it a boy, then?”

“N-no! What are you even…” Increased sputtering oh god this is the most awkward thing in the world and why is she asking me this she’s my best friend and we’re not supposed to drag romantic stuff into this because it ruins everything and i don’t even understand what’s going on in her head right now and a flush that I can feel spreading all the way down to the tops of my shoulders. I mean, what the hell? I try to enter that realm of silent communication that Ophelia and I have always had, try to dig around inside her head to figure out her motivations, but with time we’ve both gained the ability to (somewhat) lock each other out when we want to, and right now she remains unreadable. “I mean… Of course I’ve kissed a girl, Pheels, you would know.”

“I was five and my stuffed cat was officiating our make-believe wedding. That doesn’t count.”

If it’s possible for me to blush any harder, I do. “Oh. Well… Yeah. I have. One time. She was in my math class freshman year and she told me I had a pretty smile and we were kinda making out five minutes later.”

One legitimate kiss in sixteen years. Masculinity. Gone. Out the nonexistent window.

Ophelia nods slowly, like she’s considering something extremely important, looking at me in this evaluative sort of way that would feel like she was judging me if I didn’t know better. It’s quiet for a long time, the kind of suffocating silence that would drive me batty if I weren’t on my meds right now, stuck in a half-faded world where nothing goes the speed I want it to. Finally, she sets Dinah’s faded cloth body down emphatically on the ruffled surface of her comforter, deeming her thoughts worthy of vocalization. “There’s a very nice-looking boy in my Earth Science class, and he’s asked me on a date. I do believe he’s going to kiss me after the aforementioned date, and as I’ve never kissed a boy before, I’d like to be prepared.”

Blink. Blink. Sit up slowly. Blink again. This is not happening.

“Okay?”

Definitely not happening.

“I can’t make it much clearer for you, J.”

Nope. Not happening. Not at all.

“I think you could.”

Not happening. Not ever in a million years, because it’s Ophelia and she’s my best friend in the world and I don’t look at her that way, I don’t. Except for the occasional time when I do.

“I want to use you for kissing practice.”

Thank every force in the universe I don’t have a mouthful of soda right now, because it would most definitely be splattering the opposite wall of the bedroom if I did. This would be so much easier to cope with if she were joking, but I know Ophelia better than I know myself, and the deadpanned look on her face is enough to indicate that she’s serious about this. Serious as a heart attack. Which I happen to be having right now. “Are… Are you sure? I mean, it’ll be weird.”

“Weird experience is better than none at all.” The things I do for her, I can’t even. Sighing and rolling my eyes and trying for all the world to not look as completely terrified (anxious? Happy? One of those things that feels like there are a couple of weasels having a fistfight in your chest) as I really am, I manage to push myself up from my spot on the floor – my hands are not shaking. They’re not – and sit down next to her at the foot of the bed, Dinah occupying the space between us. Ophelia’s face gets that odd, searching look to it again, and there’s another long stretch of i kinda feel like she’s looking right at my soul with those big dark eyes of hers and it should feel uncomfortable but the two of us have always been home for each other and there’s just no such thing as boundaries anymore silence. Apparently she finds what she’s looking for, because she nods that same slow, appraising nod, something like determination sparking in her eyes.

And then in a flurry of movement she’s up and across the room, flipping the light switch downward so the room plunges into darkness and the plastic universe overhead sparks to life with an ethereal, verdant glow. Ophelia’s weight settles back onto the mattress, and even though my eyes are having a tough time adjusting to the sudden change of light, I could almost swear that the girl I’ve always seen as fearless looks just a little scared. “All right. Walk me through this. Tell me what to do.”

“Um…” And damn if I don’t feel completely inadequate right now, groping around inside my head for words and wanting to shout I’ve only done this one time, I’m not a Kissing Guru! Well, if there’s one thing that Speks’ English class has taught me, it’s how to be a professional bullshitter.

“It’s kinda like drumming,” I start off with more than a little hesitation, no idea where I’m going with this other than a little closer to her, picking up Dinah and setting her gently out of the way. “There’s a certain amount of technique involved, it isn’t just flailing all over the place like people think.” I’ve seen a bunch of kisses in Dev’s chick flicks, so I do my best to mimic the setup of those. One hand on her waist, one on the side of her face, and dammit I really need to stop blushing because it makes me look like I have no idea what I’m talking about (I don’t, but that’s irrelevant at the moment). “It’s all about rhythm, even in the moment leading up to it. You’ve just got to get on the same beat as the other person from the getgo.” Where the hell am I pulling this from? Never mind, it seems logical enough.

“Okay, just try to stay with me.” This isn’t happening. This is not happening. But it is.

“Lean in.” There is no way in hell that this is happening, but the sight of her silhouette getting closer tells me otherwise.

“Tilt your head to the right – no, your right, not mine.”

why did i agree to this i am such an idiot and this is going to ruin our friendship and i’m a selfish asshole for even considering this because if i look deep down i didn’t say yes because ophelia needed this i said it because i want it and that’s the extent of my motivation and i kinda really hate myself right now

“Breathe.” And it’s a reminder to myself almost as much as her, because as soon as the word leaves my mouth it registers that my lungs are burning like I’ve been underwater for five minutes and why does it feel different now we’re this close all the time but dear god we’re not close enough and even though this is all kinds of wrong i’m so far past caring I’ve just now regained my ability to respire. A shared gasp that happens almost simultaneously, and then there must really be some truth behind the whole shared rhythm thing because we’re both closing that last inch of space and –

Contact. Widened eyes that drift closed after a few seconds. Identical, strangled little noises at the backs of throats.

Kissing Ophelia is nice. Just nice. There aren’t any of those stupid things from Devyn’s movies, no fireworks or violins playing or waves crashing on the shore, but there’s this feeling of falling into place, of being perfectly in sync, and it’s really just a deeper version of that silent communication we’ve always had.

And there’s clarity. Pure, perfect clarity.

The fingers that aren’t busy winding their way through dark tousles of already-tangled hair find another set to wrap up with people always look at us like separate souls but it's never been that way ever since we were kids we just merged together until neither of us could just be ourselves without the other anymore and we were just JaceandOphelia and that was the way it would always be in the half-dark. This doesn’t change anything. Not unless you want it to.

A gentle squeeze of my hand in return, accompanied by a sigh that I’m pretty sure speaks of contentment even though it comes out kind of muffled against my lips and it’s not as clear as the ones I usually translate. You’re my best friend, you know that?

And it’s probably not the best kissing technique in the world, but I can’t help the smile that starts somewhere right around my heart and spreads until it’s a full-body grin, if one of those is even possible. I know. You’re mine, too.

Who knows how long it lasts (a minute, two, a million years), but eventually the need for oxygen makes itself known. I’m at least a little bit relieved to find that I’m not the only one blushing when we pull back far enough to get a good look at each other; I think that we must glow in the dark even brighter than the almost-stars above our heads. But we’re both grinning like idiots, and it’s kind of like that happiness just feeds off of itself until we’re both stifling back laughter even though nothing’s funny.

“I think I understand the basics now. Thanks.”

“Eh, we could try again if you feel like you need more practice. I’m feeling charitable.”

An eye roll, a widened smile, and then we’re both back into that invisible rhythm again, perfectly in sync, just like always. “Okay.”[/color][/size][/blockquote][/justify]

I wish that without me your heart would break
I wish that without me you'd be spending the rest of your nights awake
I wish that without me you couldn't eat
I wish I was the last thing on your mind before you went to sleep

“I was born to love you,” he whispers into her hair as midsummer humid heat comes through the open window carried on a cricket’s song and coats their skin like a blanket of promises that are silent but as solid as the pillars of the earth. It flows through scarred veins and pours over, evident in tangled sheetslegshearts, and something in Riley dies a little bit when he thinks that she might not believe him.

“You’re my oxygen. When you’re not with me I can’t breathe and it scares me so much because I know I’ll stop existing if you decide to leave one day.” The bridge of his nose settles into the humid patch of skin behind her ear and he inhales deeply, the scent of powder and her shampoo flooding his lungs until he’s dizzy with her and all she entails, callused fingers tracing whispersoft reverence over the glazed caramel of her skin. “Don’t ever leave. Please.”

She’s so exquisitely broken and maybe, Riley finds himself thinking, that’s why he loves her so deep and wide that he’d swear his heart was an ocean where the waves sang only her name. They’re the glue holding each others’ fractured souls together and that has to count for something in this world that would have left them in shattered heaps beyond repair, they’re the harmonies that mesh so close and right in a chorus that his heart thrums contentment (for the first time in a million years), they’re everything so deliciously dysfunctional that it gives way to warped perfection and Riley sighs at her unspoken promise she makes by simply consenting to lay here in the circle of his spindly arms, the quiet assertion that will have to be good enough for now.

“D’you ever wonder if people are made for each other?” Slender fingers find their niche in the indentations between her ribs, mapping out the seashell surface and marveling for the hundredth time in the last hour at how two such unlikely forms fit together so seamlessly that it’s as if they were created as a matched set. He likes to sing about it sometimes, their fateful serendipity, weaving verse after verse into saltydamp dark chocolate strands in the aftermath until her muscles so fresh from tensiontensiontensionrelease finally smooth beneath his touch and sleep claims her for its own, but right now the summer night outside does the singing so he simply lets his voice drift along with it, velvet smooth baritenor resonating somewhere in his chest and blooming outwards on a tide of warmth that paints her skin with every breath. “My dad told me once that there’s a red string that connects two people from the moment they’re born, and that they’re not whole until they find each other, and once they do they can never be apart.”

He’d been a wide-eyed six year old hanging on every word but unable to truly understand back then, but sometimes Riley catches a flash of red (not the kind he creates himself but something richer, deeper) around his wrist from the corner of his eye, feels a tug in the fabric of his soul pulled by deepdark eyes and starshine smiles, and he begins to think that he might finally be ready to unlock all of the wisdom his father left in words he hasn’t been able to fathom until now. Wisdom of longing, life, love.

“I feel like I was made for you.” His thumb ghosts over the pulse point of her wrist, feels the steady beat there that holds him to the world of the living, always will, and he realizes that this descent is too much for him and he’s falling, falling, fallen too hard and fast for his own good, fallen beyond the point of redemption and into something so true and real that he feels as if he never really lived before she came into his life. “I wish you’d just let me love you the way you know I can.”

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Look, all I know is that you're the nicest thing I've ever seen
And I wish that we could see if we could be something
Yeah I wish that we could see
If we could be something

picture perfect memories
scattered all around the floor
reaching for the phone 'cause i can't fight it anymore
and i wonder if i ever cross your mind
for me it happens all the time

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Hi, I'm Kaelen Dempsey, and I'll ruin your fucking life.

At least that's something I've always known, even if the few people I wanted to save would never listen when I tried to tell them. I'm as toxic as they come. The poison I loved to hold in the palm of my hand like the god I tried to be must have soaked through my skin and crept through my veins until I only had to touch something to make it wither and die. As good as I've always been at destroying things, putting them back together is something I could never do, and maybe it's just time that I realized that it is simply my fate to burn down the world and then stand alone in the ashes, looking at the carnage I used to hold dear but have come to despise.

Until now, I never wanted to hold onto anything. Attachment is a weakness I can't afford, a liability in a world that calls for me to be an immovable pillar against the rising tide of sin and depravity. Until now, sacrificing that strength for something as trivial as affection has been so ridiculous that I could laugh it off with a spike of icy derision, sepulchered in divine solitude and content to stay that way - Content. Not happy. Until now, I never understood what happy meant. Happy used to be the sense of heady satisfaction at watching someone's wheezing final breaths, used to be the mischievous achievement of skirting beneath the Law's awareness like a child sneaking sweets from the cookie jar. Now, happy has evolved to something dangerous and impossible, stolen kisses in the choir room after everyone else has left, the taste of sweet tea and summertime that lingers on full lips, a heartbeat turning fleeting and frenzied beneath my palm in the darkest part of the night.

(I tried to keep him away from the warped substance of my soul, but he grew roots around my ribcage and sprouted flowers just below my collarbones. All day I pluck their petals but I have not yet ascertained whether I am capable of love or not)

Colt has a power he doesn't even understand, the ability to shake me to my deepest foundations and leave me a fragile hull of my former strength, empty and aching for a love I hadn't known I wanted. He could turn me into something soft and vulnerable on a simple whim, open me up and let the light searing beneath his skin burn away the darkness I wear like armor until I'm nothing more than the weak, ordinary being I was when I first put it on. Despite the fact that his smile could melt away every evil thing in the world and that I've begun to crave his heartbeat like my own breath of life, he scares me. The knowledge that he could ask me for my heart and I would place it raw and bleeding into his hand is so terrifying that it robs me of my ability to function in the frigid indifference I've held my whole life. He's dangerous to every ideal I've ever held, the potential downfall of my carefully self-crafted divinity. He could destroy me with one touch, break me with a single word.

And that's why I have to break him first.

This is the way it has always been for me, taking anyone and anything that hits too close to home and destroying them before they have the chance to penetrate my innermost defenses. In the harsh reality of it, I've been alone for such a very long time that I wouldn't begin to know how to exist in a world where I was dependent. I don't believe in anything but myself, except for the part of me that wants so, so badly to believe in Colt. The swift descent into something I won't even speak of (the words I love you clung stubbornly to the tip of my tongue for ages until they finally broke in a whispered tidal wave against his skin in the hours just before dawn and I realized that I was in far, far over my head) has to be stopped, the deity I once was is still powerful enough to demand that much of the weak-willed thing I have become, and I am too talented in the art of ruination to even believe that I could attempt to let him down easy. Maybe it's better this way, at any rate. Colt is stubborn in the way that he always comes back no matter how hard I try to push him away, and maybe my only option is to cut our bonds so violently that he can never slip back under my skin.

I've still got enough charm to pick up anyone I want, even some anonymous girl from math class, and her skin feels nothing like his, too smooth and pliant for me to pretend otherwise, the delicate hands fumbling across the buttons of my shirt holding none of the familiar steadiness and guitar-rough texture. The clock in the kitchen ticks closer to when I told him to come over, time both sluggish and fluid at once. Tick, tock, and I don't want to think about this, don't want to think about what I'm about to do. Tick, tock, and she tastes wrong too, something rich and dark like coffee and guarded secrets. Tick, tock, and for some reason I feel like I'm about to cry and the last time I did that I was six years old and they were putting my mother in the cold ground. Tick, tock, and this is so wrong, I wish it didn't have to end like this, wish I'd had the good sense to never let it start in the first place. Tick, tock, and -

"Sorry I'm late, I... oh God. Oh my God."

I have to mentally scream at myself to even call up the strength to look at him, and when I do I can feel what's left of my soul fall to the floor and collapse into dust. Colt is still hovering in that space between surprise and disbelief, but with every passing second his expression shifts into something so horribly lost that a consuming ache blooms in my chest and any remembrance of my careful plan flies away on the almost tangible sound of his heart breaking. I find myself acting subconsciously, reaching out for him with the most horrible sinking feeling in my stomach. "Colt, I-"

"Don't." I've never seen him look more angry, or more disappointed, recoiling like he's been burned with a glassy haze lowering over his eyes. "Fucking don't, Kaelen. I don't want to hear it. God, how could I be this stupid? You said... and I... I... th-that thing where I listened to you and... and I..."

"And you believed me," I half-whisper, unsure if it's meant for myself or him, so used to filling in the gaps where his words falter that it's second nature.

"Shut up!" It is the first time in my life I've ever heard Colt raise his voice. I blink sluggishly in shock, feeling strangely like I've been slapped, and the surprise on my face only serves to make him more upset, sending him spiraling into a deadly, quiet calm that rivals my own icy malice on my worst days. "Just... don't. Don't try to make excuses, don't even talk to me."

And then my world falls. "I don't ever want to see you again."

The universe seems to stutter into a horrible numbness punctuated only by Colt slamming the door behind him hard enough to send some of my books tumbling off the shelf. Whatsherface from math class had the good sense to get out once the argument started, and I'm left standing alone in the middle of my living room, the full gravity of what I've just done finally crashing down on my shoulders in one fell swoop. I don't ever want to see you again. I had wanted to push him so far away he'd never come back. Guess I did the job. By all rights, I should be satisfied, but the new hollowness inside me eats away at the very fabric of my existence until in a single moment of the pressure of loss pressing on me, I shatter.

The last time I cried, I was six years old and they were putting my mother in the cold ground. Now, I am eighteen years old, I have destroyed the one person in the world I never wanted to hurt, and I collapse onto the couch and sob.

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Hi, I'm Kaelen Dempsey, and I've killed everything I ever loved.

Maybe not in the literal sense, because I've only ever loved one person and I know that he's still breathing, can hear the echo of his heartbeat pounding against the inside of my head when the night gets quiet. I don't really sleep anymore, but nowadays I lay on the couch (my sheets still smell like him and I don't even have the willpower to sleep in my room, let alone wash them and forever lose the scent of sunshine and a home I've never known) and stare at the ceiling with the TV on full blast so all of the darkness and silence can't converge and weigh on the hollow cavern of my chest until I feel like my veins are full of lead. I've killed a lot of things I didn't love as well, though, so maybe it's more accurate to say Hi, I'm Kaelen Dempsey, and I've killed everything I was ever scared of.

It's simple, if psychotic, logic. I was scared of my father, so I killed him. I was scared of becoming the same drunken, malevolent waste of space that had produced me, so I killed drunken, malevolent wastes of space. I was scared of Dahlia's obsession eventually turning on me, so I killed her. I was scared of loving Colt, so I killed his love for me. A steaming portion of guilt and crippling loss will do wonders for clearing up the way one sees the world, and the past unbearable week has shown me this much - I was never the all-powerful god of righteousness I claimed to be. I'm just a scared little boy with a handful of cyanide and self-deceit. I spent my whole life fighting the monsters in my closet - and of course irony would have it that one of those monsters I was fighting was the closet itself - but that never really made me any less frightened of them. And now that I've admitted to myself that the phantoms of my past have the power to knock me off balance, they're all coming out to play, especially the most recent one.

Colt is everywhere even though it feels like his absence is crushing me. I don't really have time to ponder this paradox through the agony of the crippling, invisible hole that's been punched through my chest, but I see the evidence of it even when I don't want to. When I wake up from my first hour of sleep in three days, brought on more by physical exhaustion than the desire to be in an unconscious state (to sleep is to dream and to dream is to dream of him, of his laugh, of the way he smiled when I smuggled us Above to see the stars for the first time in months, of the tears in his eyes when I took everything we had and set it aflame because I was too scared of the risks), it's the first thing I notice. It's an oddly detached, vaguely wistful feeling, like an anthropologist going through the fossilized remains of a once-great empire that has long since crumbled to dust.

I can see down the hall and into the open door of my bedroom from my spot on the couch. My bed's still unmade, there's still a ColtandKaelen-shaped dent in the blankets. An old Hemingway novel laying open on the end table on his side. A half-empty carton of smokes and an ash tray on mine, the stub of the last post-coital cigarette from the night before I tore us apart at the seams perched precariously on the edge of it. He has a drawer in my dresser for when he stays the night full of fresh clothes and things. Second drawer down. It's standing slightly open, the blue sleeve of a sweater hanging out of it like the ghost of him is waving to remind me it'll be around to haunt me for a long, long time. I breathe out shakily and try to fight off the hysteria that's been coming at a moment's notice lately, my emotional state much more volatile than it might be seeing as I'm not used to having emotions.

Baby steps, Kae, baby steps. Get up from the couch and try to ignore the creaky ache in my bones from lying there in grief-paralysis for too long. Walk down the hallway, edge into the bedroom. Breathe through my mouth so I don't have to smell him in the rumpled blankets or the clothes still littering the floor. Pick up those clothes. Tee shirt, pajama pants, single sock, boxers he stole from me because he said they looked comfy. Shove them in the drawer along with the stupid sweater, slam the damn thing shut and vow to never open it again. Walk over, make the bed, fluff the silhouettes out of the pillows.

Don't cry. Don't cry.

I look in the mirror over my dresser and watch my own features contort in horror at what I see, rumpled clothes and lank hair and eyes so reddened and swollen that they're barely recognizable as my own. This is what he reduces me to. This is life without him.

Breathe. Keep it together. Baby steps.

Realize that I literally haven't showered in a week. Run a hand through my hair and visibly shudder at the feel of it. Muse vaguely about how I probably look worse than homeless right now. The sardonic quip of my internal monologue feels almost normal, but it fades away again under the stab of pain that comes from looking at the Polaroid taped to the corner of the mirror, a mile-wide smile and my own close-lipped grin with what might be the choir room in the background. Breathe. Move on. Don't think about it. Shuffle into the shower and turn the taps until the water's practically scalding, some fractured logic whispering that maybe I can scrub him off my skin and remember how to exist on my own again. It doesn't work.

When the breaking point comes, it comes in the form of a toothbrush. I stumble out of the shower still not remembering how to breathe properly but still feeling significantly cleaner, reach to grab my toothbrush out of the mug on the sink before stutter-stopping to a halt and staring at it like the eighth wonder of the world. His toothbrush is green. Mine is blue. Standing there seemingly innocently next to his. I quickly dart forward and snatch his from the mug to keep the fantasy from forming, but of course it takes hold - how in some brighter, ideal existence this is our apartment, and I just showered in our bathroom, and after this I’ll go to our bedroom and he’ll still be asleep in our bed. Curled up next to the empty space in bed, his skin warm, him asleep, him stirring when I touch him, complaining that my hair's wet and my skin is clammy and leave me alone, dammit, five more minutes Kae, just five, but I kiss his shoulder-neck-cheek anyway, good morning, good morning, I love you, good morning, and he grumbles but smiles, turns his head to press his lips to mine. That could have happened. That wonderful caricature of intimacy could have been us. He offered. He offered me forever.

And I said no.

I throw the toothbrush in the very back of the medicine cabinet.

I said no.

Every inch of me aches at the realization.

With that stupid goddamn toothbrush it's all too much to bear, and I'm choking on what feels like my heart trying to crawl up out of my throat so it doesn't have to stay where it hurts so much anymore. I've probably cried more in the past week than most lovelorn teenage girls will in their miserable lives; cried until my breath hitched and I got dizzy from the lack of oxygen, cried until my head pounded with enough force I thought it would explode, cried until my body revolted against the tears and I got physically ill. Twelve years of pent up emotion have worked their way up into an atom-bomb of a mental breakdown, and I lit the fuse myself. Now all it does is hurt, all the way down to the center of me, like my soul's been flayed alive and left to wither. I've always been a stubborn bastard but there's only so much a person can take, and I've grown so tired of hurting that I'd try anything to make it stop. I know things that could, permanent things, but suicide's always seemed so woefully melodramatic and I have enough pride left to not go out like a hormonal pubescent with self-worth issues even if that's exactly what I am. But there are more temporary solutions, I know from spending my life around them and railing against them so viciously that I was driven to kill in the name of my stance.

But now? For the first time in what feels like forever, I laugh, because the irony's really too rich. Hi, I'm Kaelen Dempsey, and I've killed everything I was ever scared of. Well, maybe it's time for everything I was ever scared of to come home to roost. I'm so lost that I can't even remember what fear feels like anymore.

My fingers scrabble clumsily over the buttons of the phone, punching in Alyssa's number after three tries, voice scratchy from days of sobbing instead of talking. "Lyss, hey. This is going to sound weird, but I need you to get your hands on a bottle of the strongest booze you can get in this hellhole."

[/color][/right]

Hi, I'm Kaelen Dempsey, and I'm a mascot for everything I ever hated.

Sometimes the whiskey helps, and sometimes it makes it all hurt more, although the latter is usually when I haven't had enough to slip into a comfortable numbness and I can always fix the problem with a few swallows that burn all the way down to the wizened remains of my soul. This is something I swore I'd never do, something I'd never touch, always fearful and disdainful of everything the roughly sweet amber liquid stood for and what it turned people into. I'd always been an advocate of facing problems head-on and looked down with the worst sort of derision on anybody that used a self-medicated anesthetic to hide from their lives, but that was when I could look at the world with cold removal and had never felt like something was eating me alive from the inside, a dreadful emptiness that nothing but half a bottle of 80-proof a day can fill.

My father had it in him, that emptiness, and for the longest time I hated him for it. Still do, to be perfectly honest, but I'm not prejudiced because I'm fully aware that I hate myself far more than I ever hated him. I hated him for his actions, for his neglect and slurred taunts and undiscerning fists, but I hate myself for the very fabric of who I am, and that's something that no amount of alcohol can ever really drown. I wonder sometimes in hazy stupor which one of us is the worst. Dad knew that the unshed but still present blood of my mother's suicide all but painted his hands, and the guilt of it drove him so far into the bottom of a bottle that he never resurfaced for the rest of his miserable life. He died with a drink in his hand, I made certain of that for the pure ironic value of it, but the thought had never occurred to me that maybe by slipping that drain cleaner into his nightcap I'd been doing him a favor that he had too much of the token Dempsey pride to do for himself. I may have sworn for my entire life that I was nothing like him, but all it takes is a little emotional trauma and poor coping skills to prove the fact that the apple really doesn't fall far from the tree.

After they buried him and I cleared all his possessions out of the dump of a house that was now mine, the only thing I refused to get rid of was a battered old brushed-metal flask, something I'd never seen him without, a testament to his weakness. For years I kept it perched on the shelf as a trophy, a reminder of what I had triumphed over. Now its place of honor has been moved to my pocket, its formerly dry interior now constantly filled. It's the only way I can brave school anymore, and even then only once or twice a week, the rest of the time spent calling in sick when in reality I'm sprawled out across my couch, either unconscious or knocking back enough Jack to attempt to get myself to be, wondering sluggishly between sips who's going to be the one to slip the icy hand of death over my glass one day, history doomed to repeat itself. I might be too proud to kill myself, but if someone else wanted to do the job for me I'd shake their hand and thank them. Alyssa worries. She stopped enabling me about a month ago, saying that this wasn't the way to deal with it and she wasn't going to let me do this to myself.

I told her that she couldn't tell me what to do, goddammit, and promptly found other sources to procure what I'm not sure is a medicine or a poison anymore.

School feels surreal whenever I manage to haul myself off the couch and go, only often enough that I don't get hauled in for truancy. Every day's like a time bomb, a hazy waiting game, swaying down the halls and going to class through the less traveled paths, putting off looking at him for as long as I can. Him. He doesn't have a name anymore, I couldn't say it out loud ever since that day but after time passed even thinking it became so painful that the mental utterance of the single syllable was enough to make me feel like I was dying, burning up from the inside. That was the majority of the reason I was so frightened to go back to school; if the thought of him could burn the heart out of me then it was terrifying to imagine what the sight of him would do. But I've spent a long time doing things I didn't want to do, and it wasn't exactly possible for me to drop out of school in a society this rigid. So I went. Armed with a broken heart and enough booze to knock me into a blissful dream world slipped carefully into my pocket, I went.

English class is the worst. We sit right next to each other, too many memories of how he used to reach over and hold my hand under the desk like we were such rebels, like we had something to smirk about because we knew something they didn't. He doesn't look at me now. Never does. Acts like there's nothing but an empty seat next to him. I wonder sometimes if he's right. I wouldn't look at me either, to be honest. I don't spend to much time looking in the mirror anymore because the sad bastard looking back at me always makes my guts twist in utter loathing, but I know enough to realize that I look like hell chewed me up, spat me out, and then sent a serious case of neglected hygiene to throw up all over me. I don't even know where to find my skinny jeans and v-necks anymore, constantly living in tee shirts three sizes too big that I'd previously used for pajamas and ratty sweatpants - Lyss said that she hadn't known I even owned sweatpants, back before she stopped trying and left me to my own self-destructive devices - hair a dirty, tangled mess, eyes sunken and nearly lost under dark shadows beneath them, always scruffy because most of the time my hands shake too badly to hold a razor and I honestly wouldn't give enough of a shit to put forth the effort even if they didn't.

I've become a carbon copy of my father. Right down to the bleary, numbed haze over my eyes and the sticky-sweet smell of whiskey on my breath-clothes-skin like a telltale cologne. The knowledge of what I've turned into makes me sick.

He never looks at me. I try my damndest not to look at him. I always fail. He's that kind of broken-beautiful that draws in everything around it with the saddest of siren songs, a heartbreak novella scrawled out over his skin in invisible ink with my name in the author's space. I try so hard to pretend he's stopped existing to me the way I have to him, but it never works and every time my eyes find his features across a room or hall or three feet between our desks, something raw and awful kills me inside all over again, continuous torture until my soul's been flayed alive and screams for something to dull the pain before the final threads of my sanity snap and I become an empty shell, left staring blankly ahead for the rest of forever with nothing left beneath my skin. It's easy enough. Either no one suspects or no one cares, but it's easy to duck out of class under guise of a bathroom break, sneak into some dark corner where I can tilt my head back and dump an entire flask down my throat and relish the burn and the blissful nothingness that follows, stagger back to class with a watery smile and the pain gone for a few hours until it's time for another spoon of cough syrup, another dose of my self-medicated cure-all.

One time, he accidentally catches my eye. That's all it takes, seeing the sort of loss and disappointment that could weigh down the universe behind the deep darkness of his gaze, and even though I'm drunk enough that it would probably take me five seconds to remember my own name if someone asked, I break entirely, only holding onto numbness long enough to make it out of the room and back to my apartment before the wall comes down and all hell breaks loose, the sort of soul-shattering, sobbing breakdown that the first week of The Aftermath was like digging its vicious claws into the spaces between my ribs with a pain so vicious that I want to die, I really do, because nothing is worth this. Not even bothering with a glass, my hands scramble clumsily for the open bottle nearest to me, clutching it to my chest like my last salvation. My back somehow hits the wall and I sink slowly to the cold linoleum of the kitchen floor, my will to stand (my will to breathe) lost somewhere in the realm of sobriety that I haven't touched for months. I just want to stop hurting. It's a simple enough sentiment with a whole world of complication behind it, but it seems all too simple to my smeared consciousness to tip the fifth of whiskey in my white knuckled grasp bottoms-up with out a second thought, gasping out in ragged sobs around every swallow but not stopping until I can see a distorted picture of my kitchen cabinets through the bottom of the empty bottle. The world swims, and suddenly the cool surface of the linoleum is pressed against my feverish cheek, the bottle colliding with the floor with a hollow thud, loosely grasped in fingers I can no longer feel. Darkness eats at the edges of my vision but it's different from passing-out darkness, something more heavy and more permanent and a little bit scarier.

I think I went a bit overboard, I think at a snail's pace, eyelids drooping and breath rasping as the too-slow beating of my heart thuds loudly in my ears. The world slips into nothing, and the pain finally stops.

Good.

[/color][/right]

Hi, I'm Kaelen Dempsey, and I'm not worth saving.

I don't want to be saved, don't want to be tethered to an existence that tears me apart slowly day by day, an unshakeable loneliness that I'll never be able to overcome, a boundless love I realized too-late and from which I will never move on. I'd rather slip quietly into nothingness, this endless sea of blackness that cradles me in a blissful, empty calm, bearing me along like the arms of the ocean to a destination I can't quite place. I float there for hours, years, days, decades. Time means nothing anymore because my passage of time has always been marked by pain, and there is none of that here. Only the darkness, my fractured but no longer tortured soul, and the faint, rhythmic sound of a symphony of mechanical beeping.

Kae? Can you hear me? His voice comes along after minutes or millennia, I can't tell which, and I want to shrink away, to scream at the memory of him to go away and leave me in my newly found peace. Perhaps, I think, I have died and this is my Hell, trapped for eternity in an endless dark with nothing but his voice for company, telling me in an endless loop everything I ever did to hurt him, to brutally murder the entity of us. I want to feel terror but I can't feel anything, still swaddled like a newborn in the embrace of the dark, my lullaby the steady blip, blip, blip of distant machinery. Alyssa says that I'm being stupid, but I read somewhere that people in a coma can hear you sometimes if you talk to them.

A coma. So I'm not dead. This isn't Hell. I'm simply trapped inside my failing body on some sterile hospital bed, and he is really here. Rather than make the usual agony spike through my chest, the knowledge makes me feel something almost like comfort. I can feel an echo of my skin, not quite the full sensation but enough to feel rough fingers wrapping up in my own, a drop of salty-hot moisture colliding with my cheek, the distant voice ragged and choked. Kaelen Dempsey, if you die I will never forgive you, you asshole. Now wake the fuck up and start bitching at people and quoting Hemingway and... and doing something, because you just laying there... I can't stand seeing you like this, okay, so stop it.

Oh, don't cry. Baby, please don't cry. I want to fight the tightly wrapped blanket of darkness around me, want to claw at it until I can drag myself back to the world of light and brush the tears from his cheeks with pretty promised lies of how everything will be all right, but I can't, stripped of everything including my willpower and reduced to a state of nothing but simple awareness. I can only listen to the steady beeps that announce the continued beating of my heart, can only feel the whisper-soft brush of a thumb along my jawline and the quiet press of lips against my forehead. I'm gonna go now. Do me a favor and be sitting up in bed complaining about how shitty the hospital food is when I get back tomorrow, okay?

Another lapse of time, milliseconds, eternities, and he returns, the same solid grip on my hand and hushed words, sometimes laced with tears and sometimes not. I lose track of how many times he comes and goes, but I come to store the ghosts of words and touches up and treasure them until they kindle to a soft glow that I cling to in the dark. He talks about school, about how Jace tripped over his drum kit and broke it and Alyssa caught it on tape. He reads me the collected works of Hemingway, starting at The Sun Also Rises and going all the way through A Farewell to Arms. He tells me stories from his childhood, about how once he accidentally shot his cousin in the ass with his first BB gun and got grounded for a month, about how his mother made the best peach cobbler anyone's ever tasted. He sings, he always sings, love songs and show tunes and lilting lullabies, and with each note the warming glow at my center seems to swell, to expand and fill my existence with a fragile, silly hope that maybe one day I could fix all this, could cobble our pieces together and shape us into something that could outshine the sun.

It's been two months, Kae. I keep getting dirty looks from everyone here because one of the doctors said that if you're not awake by now you probably never will be. I kicked him in the shin and called him a quack and got escorted out, that's why I didn't come yesterday. The light at my core laughs, wants to tell him that he should have aimed his kick a little higher, that the doctors can take their opinions and fuck off because they can't get rid of me that easily, that it's okay, baby, days and weeks don't make a difference to me anymore, I'm just glad you're here. Instead, there is only the continued whirring of the machines tethering me to life, a heavy sigh and a warm hand brushing the hair back off my forehead.

I never stopped loving you, you know, he says, voice all heavy and sad in such a horrible, broken way that I want to scoop all the despair from the surface of his soul and feel my way back under his skin, make a home in the corner of his heart that I had thought would never be open for me again. I still love you. And if you - when you wake up, we're going to work this out. We're going to make it right. But hey, visiting hours are over, so I better head home. Night.

The glow I cradled in my soul brightens to such a brilliance that it sears, burns away at the dark shroud surrounding me as the steady blips on the heart monitor pick up to a frenzied pace. He still loves me, and I'd take on the very hordes of Death with a rusty butter knife before I let anything keep me from even the most fragile chance of redemption. I'm back in my own skin, feelings and sounds no longer ghosts but the real thing, the mechanical symphony of my life support now accompanied by a stiffness in my bones and the scratchy, irritating feeling of something shoved down my throat, whooshing air into my lungs every few seconds. My eyes open slowly, the lids not used to motion, vision blurry for a few moments until a sterile, white room swims into focus, a side table next to the bed covered in flowers, overly-cheery get-well cards, and a teetering stack of Hemingway novels. I jab arbitrarily at the various tubes and apparatuses feeding into my body before frustration takes over and I tug at the one that's cycling cold, filtered air through my system, sending the monitors off the deep end and a tide of shocked medical personnel running into the room.

When he walks in the next day I'm sitting up in bed, poking distastefully at some sort of jello on a plastic tray in front of me before I turn to look at him with a crooked smirk. "The food here sucks. I've got a killer craving for pizza but these troglodytes won't give me any because apparently ripping your breathing tube out gets you in the doghouse for bad behavior."

He collides into me with all the force of a tiny, dark-haired locomotive, laughing and crying and stopping every few seconds to kiss me so hard my head spins, and it takes a full minute before I realize I'm doing the same, both of us cackling like idiots with tears streaming down our faces, clinging together in a convoluted mess of limbs and lips in this tiny, impersonal hospital room. I have never known the meaning of the word home until now.

"Colt," I whisper into the hollow between his neck and shoulder, the first time his name has left my lips in months, the first time in ages that the sound of it sends a rush of warmth through my chest rather than a vicious stab of pain. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I -"

"Shut up," he cuts me off, voice sharp but eyes still smiling. "You can apologize all you want, but as soon as you're back on your feet I'm going to kick your ass for scaring me like that, you dick. I swear, if you ever -"

"I won't. God, I won't, I swear," Neither of us are coherent, still grasping at each other like we might be ripped away if we let go for even a second. There was a time I would have cared who was watching, worried about someone walking by the open door and seeing us, but a close encounter with Death will do wonders for making you realize what's really important. What's really important is him, the solidity of his frame beneath my palms, the taste of sweet tea and summertime on his lips, the fragile promise that we'll be us again. In the wake of that prospect I'll shout that he's mine from the rafters simply because I never thought I would have the chance to claim it again. My hands come to rest in the curve of his neck, thumbs placed gently in the hollows behind the hinge of his jaw. I press our foreheads together softly, still smiling so wide my face hurts, still trembling slightly from lingering tears that dry into sticky trails over my face, looking into his eyes and unable to believe that I can find solace in the action rather than agony. "I love you. And I'm going to fix this. I'll be better."

"No." With that one word my hearth threatens to fall through my body, through the floor and into the center of the earth, my tentative hope dashed as quickly as it bloomed. But seeing the look on my face, he smiles, fingers twining up with mine in a pretty braid that speaks volumes beyond the action. "We'll be better. I'll promise to never leave again if you promise too."

I want to laugh at the absurdity of that. Isn't it implied by now that I'd never leave him again in a million years? Hasn't all of this been enough proof? A tidal wave of words lick along the backs of my teeth, apologies and vows and more apologies and resolutions to be something that might one day be worthy of his love, something I know now I've always had, worthy of his trust, something I know I will have to work to regain. I could say it all, could pour it out in flowery prose across his skin and etch his name on my heart for all to see (and everyone will see it from now on, I'll hold his hand in the hall and kiss him out in the open and dare anyone who looks twice to say something about it), but my eloquence and careful design has brought me too much pain in my life, and so I leave it all to one word muttered against his lips with more earnest fervor than has ever been spoken in any prayer.

"Always."

Hi, I'm Kaelen Dempsey, and I am redeemed.

[/color][/blockquote][/color][/right][/blockquote][/justify][/size]

“Stop eating all the cookies and help me, you troglodyte.”

“The cookies are for Santa. I’m being Santa, and therefore the cookies are mine.”

“No, I’m being Santa, seeing as I’m the one setting out all the presents. You are being a gluttonous, useless layabout,” I huff, glowering from the middle of my ever-expanding nest of wrapping paper as Colt grins smugly around another bite of gingerbread. Scowling, I chuck one of the cardboard tubes at his head, sprouting a smirk of my own as it collides with a hollow thunk. “Put down the snacks and come help with the presents, fatass.”

“I’d be more trouble than help wrapping presents, skinny-ass. Do you really want to give me scissors?” Colt counters, but sets his half-eaten gingerbread man down nonetheless, getting up from his perch on the couch to join me in the middle of the living room floor. “What time is it?”

“Three AM.”

“You’re shitting me,” he groans, turning to look at the clock in the kitchen. “Kendra was up at like, five last year, and we’re not even half done with the presents.”

“We?” I deadpan, finishing up the last fold in the wrapping around a leather-bound book of fairy tales. “I’m the only one wrapping. All you’ve done since we put them to bed was eat cookies and bitch at me about procrastinating on buying presents.”

“Lies. I got up and changed Wes two hours ago. And you did procrastinate. You bought half that shit today, don’t even deny it, Kaelen.” There isn’t any sort of irritation in his voice, though, and when I look up from snipping another piece of paper, he’s smiling. “And speaking of Wesson, we’re gonna be due for a feeding in –“

As if on cue, a very demanding shriek echoes back the hallway from the nursery. Panicking, I drop my scissors and flail wildly in the general direction of the noise. “Hurry, formula’s in the fridge, if he wakes up Kendra we’re screwed, go get him!”

“You go get him.”

“Colt, honestly –“

“It’s your turn, man. That’s the rule.”

Calling my beloved husband a whole slew of off-color names under my breath, I scramble out of my paper-nest, joints creaking from hours of sitting curled up in one position – people think I’m joking when I say I feel like an old man at twenty-six, but it only means that they have no idea what a five year old and a very vocal baby will do to your mental stamina.

Thank Ripred we actually do have formula in the fridge, because I muse as my fingers close around the bottle that Wesson would be as loud as an air-raid siren before I could get more made. Ducking out of the kitchen, I snatch the plate of cookies from Colt’s hand as I pass. “At least wrap some presents while I’m gone.”

Out of all the things I ever expected of myself, being good with children wasn’t one of them. I guess that the ability has grown on me due to some cocktail of Colt’s transformation of the fabric of my soul, my own solemn vow to never be like my father, and the fact that yeah, my kids are pretty awesome. Wes has a habit of screaming when he’s hungry (every inch his father’s son)

[/color], but other than that he’s a good baby in comparison to Kendra who kept us up all night and had learned how to escape from her crib less than a week after taking her first step. It took a little getting used to after a few years without a baby in the house, but in the past six months since Wesson Hanlon-Dempsey came in to the world, Colt and I have found to our relief that caring for an infant’s kind of like riding a bike – I never forget how to do it, and he remembers but falls on his ass a lot in the process.[/color]

“Hey, buddy, tone it down. You want to wake your sister?” I whisper as I enter the nursery, scooping Wesson out of the crib and issuing a silent thank you when he quiets as soon as I’m holding him – call me Super Dad, call me The Baby Whisperer, call me whatever the hell you want as long as Kendra doesn’t wake up and decide to go see what’s going on in the living room.[/color] He looks up at me through the dim glow of the night light, and not for the first time I’m taken aback at how he’s really a little Colt clone. Colt’s messy nest of dark hair, Colt’s starshine eyes so brown they’re almost black, Colt’s goofy grin – and Colt’s impatience where food is involved,[/color] I muse as he grabs at the bottle in my free hand with a petulant scowl. “Yeah, I know, you’re interested in the bottle, not me.”

He falls right back to sleep after a few minutes of me walking him around the room, singing under my breath, and I duck out quietly once he’s back in the crib, sneaking past Kendra’s room and praying the floor doesn’t creak. The sight waiting for me in the living room is enough to make me burst out laughing, though – Colt’s covered head to toe in scraps of paper and scotch tape, the cannibalized remains of his efforts at wrapping presents littered at his feet. “Um… I don’t think they look as good as yours.”

The next hour and a half passes as the rest of the night has. I wrap presents; he eats cookies, although he does save one of the gingerbread men for me, its body decorated in Kendra’s wobbly-handed icing art. I’m dead on my feet by the time we finally go to bed, to the point that I put on my pajama shirt inside out and glare as Colt laughs and I struggle to do the buttons up before realizing my mistake. Making a sort of obscene, pleasured sound at the long-forgotten feeling of a pillow under my head, I look at the alarm clock and pray that Kendra decides to sleep in. Colt burrows under the covers next to me, an arm snaking around my waist. “Sorry I ate all your cookies, Santa.”

I flip him off sleepily. “If I’m Santa, you’re the worst elf in the fucking workshop.”

“Yeah, but you love me.” I laugh and nod, a hand seeking out the age-old reassurance of his heartbeat beneath his tee shirt. Colt scoots closer, humming a few bars of Santa Baby into my hair, and in less than a minute I am dead to the world.

---

“GET UP. DAD, DADDY, GET UP, SANTA CAME.”

I groan, rolling over and pulling a pillow over my head and cracking open a bleary eye to look at the alarm clock – six in the morning. Kendra did sleep in.[/color] Before I have time to consider it any further, a hurricane in purple footie pajamas vaults onto the bed, pulling my pillow away and attempting to smack me into consciousness with it. If Wesson’s a Colt clone then anyone could argue that Kendra’s a little girl version of me. Her hair’s a rumpled mess of honey-brown curls flying everywhere as she giggles, eyes that are my own exact shade of amber wide with the excitement unique to a kid at Christmas, and the little hands clutching the pillow being walloped at my head are already delicate and slender like the rest of her. Colt sits up and laughs, eventually deciding to save me from the onslaught by tickling her into submission until I can untangle myself from the blankets and ruffle her hair even further. “Merry Christmas, princess.”

Kendra all but drags me into the living room, leaving Colt to go get Wesson. There was no way to smuggle an actual tree into our apartment, but we managed to sneak one of the potted shrubs out of the greenhouses and decorate it with paper chains, heap the treasure trove of wrapped boxes around it. Whatever the method, Kendra’s ecstatic with the result, her face splitting into a grin as she runs over to the little almost-tree. “Look at all this stuff, Daddy! And I can read the tags this year, ‘cause Dad says I’m a sharp cookie. See, they say ‘to Kendra, from Santa.’ And he ate all the cookies, look!”

I shoot a pointed look at Colt as he walks in carrying Wesson, all festive in a green and red onesie. “Or maybe Santa was busy laying out your presents and his elf ate all the cookies.”

Colt sticks his tongue out at me, but Kendra doesn’t notice, already lost in a snowstorm of flying paper. “COOL, a dress-up box! Dad, can we have a tea party later?!”

Colt’s smile looks extremely forced. “Sure, sweetheart.”

“Are you gonna be Lady Fluffbuttons or Baronness Muffincake this time?” I ask, smirking. He flips me off under the coffee table, and I lean over far enough to kiss him on the forehead. “Cheer up, Scrooge.”

“There’s enough stuff in here for all of us to have a tea party! Daddy and Wes can come too.”

Now it’s Colt’s turn to smirk. “Eat your heart out, Baroness Muffincake.”

Kendra unwraps Wesson’s presents for him like a good big sister, throwing the clothes off into some corner but giggling as he reaches for the stuffed bear she pulls out of one of the boxes. Shrieking with infantile joy over the bear, he wiggles around in an effort to get to it before lurching unsteadily to his hands and knees. Colt drops the sweater from me that he just unwrapped in shock. “Is... is he crawling? Holy crap, Kae, get the camera!”

Wesson takes one tentative shuffle forward before falling over, looking extremely confused. I very nearly piss myself laughing. “Oh my god, he is your genetic material!”

“Kendra’s excited over her new chemistry set and books. She’s your genetic material more than Wes is mine,” Colt deadpans, scooping the baby up from the floor and handing the bear to him. “Get used to falling, buddy. You’re a Hanlon, you’ll be doing a lot of it.”

An hour later, and the living room is an abandoned mess of shredded paper and empty boxes. Kendra is at the kitchen table following the instructions in her chemistry set to make a baking soda volcano (hopefully we can escape the tea party for another day or two)[/color], while Wes babbles happily on the floor with his bear. Sighing half in exhaustion and half in satisfaction, I flop down on the couch next to Colt. “Another Christmas under the belt. D’you like your sweater? Amity taught me how to knit.”

“Not as much as you’re going to like your present,” he grins, smiling wider when he sees my confused look in response.

“I didn’t see anything under the –“

“It’s in the bedroom. The kids need to be out of the house before you get it.”

Eyes widening, I make immediate plans for Lyss to babysit tonight before reaching over and snatching one of the candy canes off the shrub-tree, biting into it with a sharp snap. “Remember when Christmas used to just be an all-day sex marathon?”

“Remember when we actually got to sleep through the night without getting up to change diapers?”

“…No.”

Colt laughs, leaning forward and pressing his lips to mine. Even the kiss tastes like Christmas, like peppermint and gingerbread and picket fences that maybe aren’t so impossible to find after all. “I love you. But that sweater’s ugly as fuck.”

“I know. Maybe you can wear it to the tea party, Lady Fluffbuttons.”

“Ass.” he rolls his eyes and kisses me again, and for a few seconds it doesn’t matter that it’ll take an hour to clean up all this wrapping paper, or that the explosion and Kendra’s laughter from the kitchen sounds like another few hours of cleaning on top of that. It doesn’t matter that we’re kind of flying blind with this whole parenting thing (I think we’re doing okay)[/color], or that sometimes the judgmental glares from people who don’t even know our family still hurt way more than they should. Most of the time we’re too damn busy to remember that at our core we’re still two stupid teenagers in love, but by some snow-kissed miracle, we’re allowed to imagine mistletoe over our heads and go back to years ago in a creaky old house with red shutters that had never been home before us. My thumb brushes across the worn gold band on Colt’s finger, and I smile against his lips.

“Merry Christmas.”[/blockquote][/size][/justify][/color][/blockquote]