the way jewels float // emerson

( T   A  T   T  O  N )


" and tuesday nights don't come around
they sink into the sky
they found an island on the moon
but I just can't stand to leave you so soon "

---

And so Tatton came home, without Emmett, and part of it felt like they had never come home at all.

It wasn't like when Ridley left- he loved her, sure, after she won. She left, got the crown, and slapped high expectations onto the rest of them that Tatton frequently was reminded of that he could never reach. He would never be like Ridley, or Silk, or even Aurora in the way that she pushed to be something successful. Each of them didn't just want to succeed- they needed it. Had to, for their mother's sake, and each day they each looked more like her. The way soft cheeks would deflate with age and trauma, and Tatton sat cross legged on Emerson's floor. 

Looking himself in the mirror, pressing his fingers into his cheek and eye lids. 

Rubbing chubby fingers on his lips, feeling the skin plead against the pull, he would never be like them. He could never be sour and blue and wrapped in that sense of self worth; he didn't even know if he had self worth. Only people to impress, people to live up to. The disappointment that hung around his neck in the way and he didn't understand how Emmett could put his head straight though, accepting the noose like it were from their mother's jewelry box. The only thing Tatton could imagine was that it had been. That she was slowly killing them all in the way she pushed heavy birds out of a too small nest. 

Ridley found the way to fly, and Tatton wanted to too. Craved it, even in the ways they denied those claims. They failed classes and skipped to smoke, pretended to be Aurora and idolized his sister. Idolized the way that she knew she would live - god, he hated the melodrama of it. The longer he sat in Emerson's room, the more and more he realized he hated things. Tatton had long hated the amount of validation that came from something so temporary as being a career, there were two hundred kids in his class alone and only enough time for six volunteers- at most. At best, if he was even in the best year. 

And he doubted it, all things considering. They all trained to kill themselves and that was probably the only thing Tatton had learned from it- he dumps the ashes of the lit cigarette into Emerson's carpet. In front of the mirror, like it was a freckle of Tatton he couldn't ever remove. Even if they didn't want to see it. The hair on his neck stood up watching his own body move, he uses his sister's hair clips to tape his hair down to the scalp. Wild growing things, curly and untamed and his mother loved his hair as a kid. Loved the way he looked like human cupid, a little cherub thing with raw pink nose, and bushing blonde hair. 

Maybe that's why she ignored him, he was never supposed to grow up. 

He was just her little son, her tiny lion cub and she'd kiss his knees the same as she would Cathy's. Twins and they hardly looked alike- the two of them weren't like Emerson and Emmett. Tat and Cat and he was mean to her like it'd win him something, make him seem older. He was only fourteen, still, watching the way he was born too late to ever catch up to it all. They were successful before he was even a concept- before his mother had the chance to know Cathy was alive alongside him. 

Tatton always wondered what that must have been like - maybe his mother thought he was a sister too, all along. He picks through her jewelry box, holding the necklaces and earrings and rings in the fabric of his shirt. It droops with the weight of the world, how heavy being golden must be. Now it all just lays on the ground, between ashes and the texture of the carpet, between the orbit of Tatton's wrapped legs. There's something heavy in the pit of his gut as he holds the earring's finding to the soft of his earlobe. 

This is how it worked, right? He didn't pay attention to it much, he'd heard from Aurora how their mother pierced all his sister's ears as children. Tatton, Harper and Emmett didn't, and in a few weeks, Emmett would have enough piercings for the rest of them. He hated that he laughed at it a little, at the slowest suicide he'd ever watch. Aurora would have laughed with him, probably, well hopefully. He watched his hand twitch holding the hook's point to his ear, he's never been good with pain. 

Blame it on the teachers, ain't that their job? 

He pushed his lips together, tasted the black lipstick between them. Brown eye shadow a bit of everywhere, from eyelids to finger tips, a print of it on his cheekbone -- Tatton was pretty awful at this. Comically so, he felt like laughing until he bled with the sharp pain, the finding of a heavy earring tearing through the soft flesh. The way tigers eat baby faun, a glistening pain- gritting his teeth and it sticks half way. Refusing to pierce itself until Tatton forces it the rest of the way with a tear in the skin, "fuck, ahhh god d a m n," he exhales. That heavy breath caught for too long and both hands shake, struggling to place the backing correctly. The tiniest needle, the perfect size sword for such a young lion boy. 

That fucking hurt - welp, "time for the next one!"

He would have done it too, lopsided in the way he adjusts to the weight of the earring. Tatton's never been one to quit half way through; only at the beginning, sink or swim mentality. Maybe he got that from his mother, watching the way she gave up on so many failures. High expectations is nothing more but the lust for failure, the pain of freshly pierced skin. Tatton nearly jumps when he hears the bedroom door open -- the lights been off all along. He's always lurked, hidden around corners as if he was doing something wrong. 

To him, he was. He always was. 

He keeps his breath to himself, panicked in the way the assortments of jewelry and make up falls between his lap and onto Emerson's floor. Silk's overall skirt nearly a dress on him and he slides the closest's floor mirror door as quiet as he can, holding his hand over his mouth inside. To cover his breathing, the sounds of lungs, as if he was never alive to begin with. Something so hard to believe, as the blood is warm when it trickles down his neck.