Snippet #2662069

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Where would her bones go to rest if this was all that lie ahead? To sooner be found in a grave than a bed as a means of peace was morbid to contrive all together, but this was a habitual theorem. Where there was war there was masochism. Suicide wasn’t the ultimate form of self annihilation. Being dilatory in the madness was. Fucking flagrant. Avoiding all the exit signs, fingers twisted ‘twix those of the ones you loved the most, who pulled you away from fire escapes swearing that adjusting to the smoke was all you needed to do and the blaring alarm would eventually become just stark background noise.

At sixes and sevens one second, apologies the next. Childhoods composed in such luxury rarely did a bang up job of establishing p’s and q’s [properly at least], but Senna had it down pat. Suppose that’s what came of constantly walking the same tight rope only a few steps behind her brother. Always at the heels of a ticking time bomb and learning one thing from it: discipline. Reserve. The strength of apologies, resolve, recognized mistakes, and reconciliation.

The truth of it is, you gotta’ make your own decisions. Step up. ‘Cause if you don’t take a step, the world will take it for you. And that can get really God damn dangerous.

The amount of times Senna had been in this very same situation was unable to be juggled by hands or feet. She’d accepted a long time ago that she couldn’t harbor any real loathing for it, that this is just how Bel was and how he’d always be. If he wasn’t jumping the gun for a beautiful woman or greenback proprietary, he was either sleeping or in a fist fight. He’d been known to eat his heart out only among few. From the look of Gunner’s face, mussed with splenetic storm astern to her brother’s apparent rhetoric, he’d long forgotten that part of Bel, too. But Senna didn’t. And if Julia had half a heart or brain, she didn’t either. To be known true blue and bare was rare in this world at all. More with these two families. If Bel went six feet under any time soon, the chiselings of philanthropy and kindness might not be found on his headstone. But a monster? That’s something he wasn’t. He still had close-mouthed dreams, fire in the belly about eventually going somewhere better. Being better. The sad thing was his pride and comfortability in malice, in money. He stuck around this long to settle scores, perhaps with a swelled head. But somewhere buried deeper than the secrets behind their father, was heavy love. His chest just never much caved to show it. Guess it couldn’t, not when every side of the world he knew swung baseball bats and blasters in his direction.

However, no excuses were made for the arrogant rush of testosterone ruining somebody else’s day. Senna never even entertained the thought of pardoning it or following her brother out. Hani could handle this one. Everyone knew that girl was fuller than the temple for mercy and moderation, something few lineages in proximity had. And she could stop him. She did stop him. With feather-fine efficiency, swept him right out, hushed the gunshot bedlam coming out of him and coaxed him into the calmer night.

Digits went staggering for amends before Hani had gotten him to the doors. Senna propped her handbag open, shuffling through it, not realizing she’d began to express her regrets in Spanish novels. It wasn’t until eerie quietude took the atmosphere by storm that she paused to look up. She’d gone glassy with remorse and humiliation. The white of her eyes strained to stay chaste, and breakers eating the dust of ocular tensity made her blink like Bambi would at a shotgun. Mercurial nerve loss. A tick brought knuckles to her brow bone, then to a high cheek where an unalloyed beauty mark resided on the right side. She thought hard. Pursed lips sealed temporarily while her scrutiny fell back to ATM-fresh bills. “I would really like to square up in more than just money,” she whiffed in this bitty feline fashion, “I can’t apologize enough. I’ll help clean up and - whatever you need, I would like to compensate you for your... Your losses. My brother has zero sense of reproach and I am so, so sorry.” She’d said this all a hundred times. It brimmed fluently from her but she was no less genuine, sable lofty lashes trying to bat away the cerebral pain. A headache slithered from the notches of her mental, in due time accompanied by a far more physical presence. She’d been a bit meek to meet his survey. Thankfully he was hardly giving it.

Politic Gunner. Wise enough not to gnash his teeth too loudly and streetwise to the point of knowing safe distances at the drop of a hat. Or, almost-bar-fights and family-brewed, brazen ballistics. He’d spoken in such a noiseless tongue that it took her a minute to form the words. Anxiety stabbed itself into her neck as she reclined sideways on the bar for a minute to reply, currency in hand. Secondary to his admission, “Some bullshit,” slipped out of the side of her pout, “Please don’t be so austere, G. This was not your fault, por favor no lo hagas.” To be subliminal was not entirely out the window, so her movements were vague and gentle. Senna grazed his gesture for his wallet with an elbow, careful to only barely touch him. As expected he refused. Wasn’t much for letting her clean up after anyone but herself, something he expressed plainly on more than one occasion. But she could feel the tremble in his posture from being hot under the collar. From labored inhibition. Which in turn made her only want to jam his wallet back into his pocket, pay off Mr. Little Lady with her own money and see herself out. Maybe text Gunner ‘round the witching hour mark asking if she could come fix him some morphine tea and explain. She held all the tickets and manifested as the tax of disturbance dealt by Bel, and it made her tired. Worse. Sober.

Just let Gunner handle it kid.

But God damn. Wasn’t it her mess to handle? Sure was with Bel outside, no doubt in her mind trying to butter Hani up and mew ‘sorry’ tenfold while completely forgetting what a shit show he had put on. Regardless, Gunner meant no ill intent, didn’t want this on Senna’s plate. No one on his side did. Except for Julia, and lookit’ here, she got what she wanted. ‘Cause at the end Senna was taking the heat in all reality, like good old Jubesy knew she would. One fatal flaw put Julia’s game plan off though - Gunner’s integrity. It would only spark up more rage, but for now she’d receded somewhere. Probably to stalk out the situation with Bel and his nightly flavor, not like she was about to offer any explanation for the scene to her brothers.

Senna wasn’t surprised by the raging rejection that Jona fire-breathed. When his wife came in to intervene, Baby just nodded, avowing her appearance in the morning because really, what else could she do, now? She glanced at Gunner, shook her head and backed up.

Temperance made her teeter. Like chinaware on the bad tail of a richter scale. “If you wanted to get snowed in together later,” she sidelined, “I think I might know what happened.” She simpered, gracious, knowing only he heard the flat invitation with her back to him. If he took her up on it there was a 90% chance they wouldn't even discuss the chain of events. They knew each other well enough by now to gauge conversations in time spent together, right? She felt the looming shadow of him, torrid and tickling her spine. Whatever they decided to tell later followed the code of few dull moments either way.

Night’s still young, even if busted in framework. Senna was at the edge of the room then, smoothing fabric that had been scrunched by her grip and released in pastel green rimples that were dampened with cold sweat. From the corner of her eye, a small head quavered back into existence. Out of camouflage, with perplexity finding her at her father’s side, was the same little girl from earlier. Senna now presumed ‘Jona’ as leader of the pack and terribly rustled man. Father. A strikingly whiskered figure who’d hammer the fear of God into anyone with a look or, as fate had it, a cane. Just the thought of absorbing that kind of blow made Senna wince. And made total sense. “Hey,” she lulled to Jona’s cub, “You’re lucky you know? Your papa eats bozos like my brother for breakfast. I wish I had his appetite, then I wouldn't be in so much trouble right now.” Modulation of her words curled around Colombian articulation in an almost maternal song. She spoke the way her mother always did, rarely raising her voice. Always steady. Like the last thing a person desired to hear before falling into REM, not only comfort and safety from nightmares, but promise to protect them the next day and all that followed. And that was enough. For now.

Dialing it back, Senna rounded to be met with a chimerical phantasm in drawn material. White teeth flashing behind steamy prattle, surely something she’d heard before. November. The sweetest of all miasmas, just in the way she shifted rolling hips. A Bel backer but not a lap dog. Senna closed the distance, chin resting on her shoulder with a tilt that let lips tickle the nape of her neck, “Hold me,” she joked, “My brother is a jackass, I’m but frail and weak. And overworked. And underpaid.” She beamed over November’s bone structure at Dominic who held a full glass. Esteemed him with words not found but the velvet of seeing his face again after so long. Nothing had granted her a bed of roses - but the consciousness of guitar strings slid across by fingers, now scarred and tattooed with rugged strife. They still weren’t ordinary. Not even in a place like this. And she felt at ease, pulling a slipped stem from behind her ear and laying it over the top of his glass. Floral restitutions never mislaid. Not even at the fists of someone who weighed in at two hundred pounds and ground his teeth at her family name, never. The love between these two was effective anesthetic in a world of malady and bloodshed. Toasted to with tacit oaths to never come apart or go blind when there were motley gardens waiting for them, some place at the edge of town where their damnation hadn’t yet touched.

“I’m gonna’ dip. See you later, maybe, Nov.” She’d brushed between Simon accidentally on her exit, arm snaking away from November and skimming the finer fabric of his pieced ensemble. Nice. Steamed, pressed, perfected. Even up to the shaped eyebrows and hedged facial hair. He’d make a hell of a fashion consultant, if he was his own, that is. A petite nod of approval and a quiet, “Sorry,” and she was moving through the dissipating crowd once again that only once grabbed her attention as she escaped.

Still here? Junko was inhabiting the post-entropy with intimidating polish but had found her attention snarled somewhere else. Senna could guess a few things, knowing that she sat at the second sovereignty of a formidable clan. Whatever was witnessed was small time shit for her. She’d fried way bigger fish just in the time it took most people to get dressed for work, so she may have been less concerned about what had Bel PMS’ing. Buuuuuuuuut taking her mode into consideration, she assuredly saw him as a smirch on the evening. Maybe Hani too. And Baby could not argue that him getting his mucky paws on her was a disaster in the making. Please don’t look my way and think I have anything to do with that.

October could have gone a little easier on its wind chill but the compromise was a low sixties strength that made it possible to wear dresses in a whirlwind of apricot leaves. A breeze whisked through her delicate build as she fared toward a flickering row of street lights, into twilight. She retrieved a cigarette, failing to find a lighter in her bag when the goosebumps from autumn’s wheezing made her raise her focus. Fancy finding you here.

His eyes were pitted apart by a narrow nose and hollower than the history he was known for, not just their own. Striated, he didn’t even smirk to acknowledge her. Only gazed into her without surprise. Like he knew she’d be down this road in particular. She wondered what had him at the same place, if the hands that moved to light her up were in anyone’s entrails lately. But if there was anything she’d learned from Aedan over their seemingly sempiternal scores, it was to not be surprised. Not by the needle nor nerve. Not by the scarlet-soaked slacks that didn’t make it quite into the hamper but instead threatened to bathe tile in DNA. He always cleaned up his own messes and everybody else’s. Made a killing doing it - and yes, that’s a considered conceit. A breath held itself in her sternum, mouth sulking for a moment and splitting into a smile at the turn of events, “Gracias, stranger,” gray coils hissed from a glowing cherry, “Are you just wandering or working?” She also knew with Aedan, she never had to worry. There was no fear associated with him in the way other people cowered. But was he scary? Absolutely. To her? No. Could he be if he wanted to? Yes. “Tuve una mala noche. Bel caused a whooooole mess back there, wanted to kill Gunner for some stupid...” She caught herself, refrained immediately, “Ah, fuck it. Nothing important. You got time to get a drink?” Aedan was different. A man of his word. Cold blooded, sharp, and every bit the dingo that would eat your baby.

It’s just the god damn heroin...