i groaned. “oh, why. why.” i groaned again, as if it could help the fact that my entire body felt like one giant, ready-to-burst artery. “i’m never drinking that much again. oh, Odin, mercy. hold me to that.”
“you have my word,” he said, every bit as solemn as a priest as he traced an x over his heart.
“thank you.”
he was leaning against the kitchen island, sans shredded costume and in comfier-looking attire: grey sweatpants and a dark, thin, oversized jumper. he seemed refreshed—less pitiable than he’d looked during rehearsal, for sure—but i could still see traces of clingy, raspberry-red blood caked under his short, usually-neat nails, and smudged around the backs of his ears. some of it was still clinging to the nape of his neck, matting his hair. i wondered if that was something he’d just gotten used to by now.
“should i call you a ride home?”
“only if you’re trying to get rid of me,” i replied, rubbing at my bleary eyes with balled fists. the room was not unblurring. “otherwise, i’m too tired to do anything but marinate on your couch.”
“marinate away,” he said, with a short, dry laugh. i let my neck go limp against the headrest. “are you… too tired for company?”
“never too tired for your company,” i said. i’d intended it to sound teasing, but instead found myself sounding painfully earnest. “uh, gum?” i asked, mostly to change the subject, but also because the acrid taste in my throat was becoming increasingly insufferable.
“in your pocket,” he explained, and i was amazed to reach into my jean pocket to find that he was right. had he put that there? i didn’t have time to ask. he was walking over and taking a seat next to me.
“sorry if i woke you,” i said, sheepishly, sticking the gum into my mouth, and relieved immediately by the overwhelming, almost aggressive mint flavour.
“not at all,” he dismissed. “i’m usually up at this time, anyway. you know, 3AM is good for practicing lines, or thinking out loud.” he paused, and it was not lost on me when his eyes flickered down to my working mouth. “it’s good for a lot of things, actually. “
“it’s good for re-evaluating your life’s choices,” i said, focussing very hard on not choking with the weight of his stare. he just hummed, as if deep in thought.
he sighed. “sometimes i wish it could just stay 3AM, you know? for a day or something. i’d give anything to just have time stop for twenty four hours.”
before i could help myself, my head was tilting in confused intrigue. “really? you wouldn’t get bored? 3PM, maybe that i could get behind,” i challenged. “but at this time of night? er… morning? there’s not much to do.”
the look on his face was one of genuine bewilderment, bordering on offence. “there’s plenty to do at this time, Ada.”
“like what?” i teased, perhaps against my own better judgement. “besides practicing lines or thinking out loud, i mean.”
“anything,” he said, simply. i was looking at him close enough to see the fascinating pink of his mouth curl upwards at one corner. “everything. you name it.”
i was earnest in my considering of his proposition. i luxuriated for a minute in his anything and everything before realising that none of it was acceptable or reasonable and to be honest, even possible with my current debilitating affliction.
“i can’t name it,” i confessed, eventually, more out-loud than i’d anticipated, and definitely too desirous-sounding.
“anything,” he repeated, and this time, he sounded surer than before. it only increased my misery. “whatever you’re thinking, 3AM makes it possible.”
i was petulant. “you don’t know what i’m thinking,” i said, my voice an audible pout.
“i don’t know what you’re thinking, you’re right,” he said, shrugging. he leaned in a little closer, which was when i could make out the remnants of blood spackled on his glorious face, so fine and so dark that i’d have confused it for natural freckles had i been a casual-enough kind of friend. “but i don’t have to know what you’re thinking to know that it’s possible right now.”
“i don’t understand you,” i said, frustrated.
a laugh bubbled up out of him, almost like it’d taken him by surprise. “which part?”
“a lot of parts.” the words were eluding me. “you make me feel… weird. being with you feels like i’m getting away with something.”
he looked at the ground, then, and i felt suddenly more oxygenated. “i don’t understand myself either.” he leaned back against the couch and closed his eyes. “Ada, what would you do if you had a year left to live?”
i swallowed thickly. i felt that way often, i thought, and with increasing frequency and legitimacy.
“i would spend all year wondering what to do,” i said, which sounded like a joke, but was as truthful as i’d ever been. “i would die in the same spot i first heard the news.”
“y’know, i think i would do too much,” he said, his voice lowering to the kind of pitch you’d expect from the guilty on one side of the confessional booth. “full-blown hedonistic bender. and i don’t know how i feel about that knowledge.”
“well, you don’t have a year left to live,” i reminded him. “right? so you don’t have to feel about that knowledge at all.”
“one year, ten, fifty, is there much difference? it’s one year, over and over, until there’s none left. and i can’t possibly know if it’s gonna be this year or the next one or the one after that.”
“do you ever feel like… an impulse towards hedonism?”
“constantly,” he said. “every year is my new last year. and i get closer each time to doing too much.”
“whatever it is you want to do, i’m sure it’s within reason,” i began, not entirely confident. “or even if not. is it so terrible to do too much?”
he went quiet. “it’s hurtful.”
“a temporary hurtfulness?” i asked. he nodded. “the kind of hurtful that would put your mind at ease after the fact?” he nodded again.
“it would be messy, and ugly. i would be a monster. it would ruin her life,” he explained.
“living can be a little monstrous sometimes,” i said. “but i’m not trying to convince you of anything. i just want you to feel good.”
“i’m feeling good right now,” he said. i smiled, despite myself.
“good.”
“how are you feeling?”
“good,” i repeated, which made him laugh.
“i want you to feel better than good,” he began, “want you to feel excellent, like fantastic, like amazing, like—”
“kiss me,” i said, all in a rush. “i want you to kiss me.”
“i can’t—you know i can’t do that.”
“you can’t or you don’t want to?”
“i can’t want to,” he shot back, which i only half-understood.
“sorry,” i began. “you’re right. please forget i said that. i think this time the alcohol must have damaged my brain permanently.”
“don’t be that way.” he looked at me helplessly. “let me call you a ride home.”
to my astonishment, despite how long we’d been talking for it was still 3AM, on the dot. “i’ve overstayed my welcome.”
“never,” he said. he took out his phone.
then, i was overtaken by a kind of demonic recklessness, which swept over me like a tidal wave of pure, tyrannical petulance and longing, and before i could consider the words banding from my mouth i was muttering under my breath that magical imperative i’d been obsessed with since first reading it: “suffer me.”
he went bone-white. “what did you say?”
“nothing.” i tried to deflect, but his stern expression and the thickening silence made me crack under pressure. not that i needed much pressure to crack in the first place. “i said, suffer me to kiss thy mouth, Iokanaan.“
“that’s dirty,” he said, his face rapidly filling with the brightest, most indulgent pink colour i’d ever seen. “unfair. totally filthy.”
“suffer me to kiss thy mouth, Odin,” i continued, teasing, “i will kiss thy mouth, Odin. suffer me to kiss—”
and then he did, and the room tightened around us as if vacuum-sealed, and he tasted like honey, and my eyes fluttered closed in a mix of pleasure and guilt or some new exquisite torture entirely and i’d never realised how hungry his mouth was until right then, and i had never before felt so ashamed or alight and he must have been casting some kind of magic spell on me because i felt myself swirling, becoming more liquid than girl, and he was crystallising me, turning me back into something legible, pouring me back into myself, and i was made aware of how sweet it could be not to suffer, to have everything made true all at once, to have desire manifest hot and ready in front of me, and then all too suddenly he was pulling away and i was back to my old regular, horrified, aching self.
i was panting, panting, panting. “but Hina—” i started.
“your ride is here.”
“but we—” i started, again, as he stood me up by the shoulders and began hurriedly shoving my belongings into my arms.
“—were just rehearsing,” he finished for me, as he ushered me towards the door. “we were just practicing. it was harmless. meaningless.”
my lip trembled. “i see you’ve taken my advice to be monstrous to heart. you always were a quick learner.”
he winced, and for a second, i almost recognised him. he rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand, and then unlocked the door. “you have plenty idea what it’s like to be monstrous, Ada.”
“the year can’t end soon enough,” i said, surprising myself with the sound of my own spiteful voice.
“that’s it, self-immolate for me, make this easy for the both of us,” he responded, as the chilly outside air made my hairs stand on end.
“goodbye, Odin,” i said, turning away from him and not looking back.
“don’t be a stranger,” he mumbled; out of habit, i supposed.