i've lost time , i can't lose more {Sue x Orville}

Everything feels lighter with the back of his head missing. 

They'd sponsored him redemption, the hands of mercy kissing his lips, its tongue laced with cyanide. Sue Tate had spent his days in seven whispering to the winds of the forest, carving little birdies out of the splinters in his thumbs and spewing poison into them, telling lost tales of nights spent between the bedsheets, recognizing every angle and curve of a woman's face under the moonlight- 

-trying to forget it all when the sunlight hit his face the following morning, one night stands turned public, etched into the rings of the tree trunks surrounding him. 

Lies, all of it. 

Stella Summit was his first kiss, threading bloodied fingertips together as Rowan Combe died in the dirt beneath them. Her lips had tasted like rusting metal, had felt as if the winter was embracing the both of them. It had burned like fire and stung like ice, had ripped the words he wanted to say from his mouth and set them alight, sealing his fate in the arena he'd thrown himself into. 

For five long days, it had remained the most intimate thing he'd done with anything. 

And then, on day six, in the aftermath of his partner's shadow he'd kissed the barrel of a shotgun, and blown his brains out all over the angel wings that sprouted from his back. 

His last lie? Promising himself he'd go to heaven.

He sits on the grass that has sprouted around his tombstone, a six pack of beer to his right, one of them already missing. Wordlessly, he takes a long sip of the drink, savoring the taste of it all. No matter how hard he tries, he can't get the taste of a bullet out of the back of his throat.

But he can feel the damage it did, one hand reaching back to brush fingertips against the bloodied flesh that covers the back of his skull, feeling the blood intertwine itself between his fingertips. It's somewhere between fresh and healed, leaving the surface exposed but the damage beneath healed, gaping hole turned coffin, leaving him just enough room to speak, to drink, to breathe. 

To remember. 

When he'd first looked at his tombstone, he'd seen everything. 

At first, he'd seen himself, stared into the eyes of a dead man, opened wide with panic. He'd seen his body thrown in a coffin, watched every single of of his brothers and sisters react to his death, felt every single emotion they'd felt, heard every word they'd spoken behind closed doors, every tear they had shed. 

His irony is in the fact that he can feel so much for the people he has never known. 

His funeral became the same as that of the tributes that had died before him, forgotten and lost in the oceans they'd drowned in. His grandmother had been there, draped in the shadows she had told him stories in, umbrella shielding her from the rain. Her eyes had become the storm that was above her, clouded and empty, swirling with the memories that had slipped from her grasp years before. 

At the end of it all, she'd asked just who that boy was that they were mourning. 

And maybe, he'd told himself, this was hell all along. 

The shattered pieces of a broken heart had turned sour with every sip of beer he'd taken, had wilted and fallen until they'd poisoned him with the same lies he had spewed all his life. Fires had burned in his stomach, sighs and grunts and

finally

laughter, at all of it. 

He had been told that a dead man isn't really dead, that the spirit becomes trapped until it can tidy up its unfinished business. The irony? He'd called the man a liar. 

Maybe that's his curse, to look at his forgotten tombstone for all of eternity, given a mouth to speak but no one to speak to. 

He crushes the empty beer can in his hand, watches his knuckles go white and blind him with their light, feels the drop of blood that clutches to his fingertip squirm its way out from between flesh and metal, falling to the ground beneath him. He throws the beer can behind his back, hand drifting up to dry his eyes, head shaking in disbelief. 

He hears the crunch of a beer can behind him, feels every breath the boy takes as he stares at the bloodied head of a dead man. 

He knows who it is before he turns his head, but that doesn't stop him from sighing at it all, turning his head back around and letting his eyes stare into the dirt in front of him, mouth opening to speak. 

"For once, I'm not going to lie. I didn't think I would see you here, Orville." 

And he still can't tell if this is hell or not.