[P] YOU.

[Only]

  

“ polarized, divisive drowning in strife ”

It all begins with a singular sound that Florentine makes, so simple, and yet,

Mmm, his mother used to make that noise at him.
Mmm, Madras used to do that when something didn't impress her much.
Mmm, the taste of Stephen's cooking never impressed her much either - but she didn't want to say what she really thought.

Mmm,  it invokes something deeper within Stephen.  Suddenly the urge to make Florentine feel bad for herself is a little more rewarding to an asshole like him.  He isn't sure where he makes this decision within him, perhaps it is his unspent childhood catching up to him.


Maybe you are right.

        I am right, he thinks.

But I won't hide it.

        That is foolish, he warns.



But she doesn't care.  Oh no, not Florentine,

"Okay, Madmax, I'll help you figure your wing situation into a better design that might actually help it to heal.  You have really let yourself go." She looks sloppy to him.  Stephen, though covered in blood, dust, feathers, and teeth - in a snakeskin suit, no less - knows how to make love to a camera with his aesthetics.  He knows how to wear his danger, his disaster, his dynasty.  He owns it.  And, desperate Pretty Boy - Pretty Dumb Boy - like Only, wishes he was just as cool as his evil twin. How is it that Stephen can treat someone so poorly and yet, have a full conversation with them - long enough to be liked, no less.  He has to remind Only of his own shortcomings quite regularly to keep him down. 

Down so that Stephen can be up

Stephen, in their most lucid dreams, always tells Only that it is the knife that people like.  Not they themselves.  Stephen knows they are both crazy, everyone knows.  They only have the knife to draw the curious in, add 'disturbed and unusual' and it is a sealed deal, he always says.   

See: @Florentine

 What is a dream but a nightmare for Only - when he is getting dating advice from a serial killer that lives inside of the same body.

Meanwhile,


Madmax here,

I have been everywhere, 
  
        Oh I bet you have.  He agrees.

She doesn't need a knife or a baby to find Stephen interesting.  She has never been bored in need of entertainment to begin with.  Stephen thinks that the buttercream fairy probably delights in those shudders he gives when she nuzzles into him, like right now.  Or maybe - just maybe - she's just as sick as he is.

Never.  Only whispers.  Never like you.

Her nose and his nose touch, Stephen can't wait to start counting the seconds until they are apart again. He shivers because she is Holy water thrown against his devil skin, except with Holy water it stops stinging after contact, Florentine ...

Florentine is like sulfuric acid to Stephen's rotten soul, eating up all the wrongs and rights that weave together to make the most of him.  The only one immune to her is fast asleep, buried deeper and deeper underneath the layers of sediment that Stephen has thrown on top of Only's grave.  Buried alive.  There is nothing but ghosts that fill Stephen's hallways right now, no warnings, no hails, no distractions from the brat, Only.  A part of him resents the lameness of Only, who is so sweet and so gentle that friends like Florentine are, mmm, pleasant. 

Ah, that word again.

Something wanes in his mood, vaguely, 

"I have been everywhere too," he sounds so sleepy when he says it, so world-weary and different. "It took me twenty years to walk the entire bottom of the sea."  He says.  He isn't lying when he says it either, Stephen makes a distasteful expression and looks away.

He hates her because she is so easy to talk to. 

Then she asks, Have you met an Ilati? 'Once.' He answers soberly.

He hates her because she is weird and understanding.

Oh, have I met an Ilati.  Of course I have, I've killed one.  For Winona.  He wants to say, but doesn't.  

She's not that understanding.

Like two kids on a porch, he just carries on with a shake of his head, as nonchalant about it as he can be.  Stephen cannot lie as well as Only can, it shows thin and translucent in the way he stands alone and rolls his shoulder.  She says something about animals, not horses, and then that is where he laughs - scoffs - at her words.

"Oh Honeypuff, are horses not animals too?"  Her lips feel pleasant(terrible) against his throat.  That's when she says it.  That is when she says Winona's name.  Florentine says it in that voice, that Knowing tone.  She has his utmost attention, a snake in for the kill.

"Okay beebrains, what do you know about Winona?"

Then she asks if they know each other, if they have met before.  Snake mode: Disengaged.  He takes her former question in place of the latter, and engages then.

"If we go together, you can't walk with me looking like that.  Its too risky."  And then,

"--let me see your wing now, I have some silk,

        --and no, I did not steal it."  And then,

"I know a thing or two about tying someone up."  


Stephen does not lie about the silk, he did not steal it,

he couldn't have,

because Only did.  

O N L Y
technically I still exist, but not in my mind

 

@Florentine   wtf even Stephen, seriously.