"and I love you like a penny loves the pocket of a priest" pt. 1

Instructions

— They both have their moods. That is to be expected. When you live in the world they do, when you’ve become what they have, the idea of happiness is something that is fleeting at best, and laughable at worst. He supposes that sort of statement sounds edgy, something you’d find on an old MySpace post next to a badly edited photo and a My Chemical Romance lyric. Unfortunately, he cannot find any other way to phrase it, a better method of articulating the odd and convoluted emotions that paint and repaint their life like phases of the moon. — Nari fiddles with the key he gave her, muttering under her breath as it jangles and chimes in a way so cheerful it is almost mocking, her already threadbare patience only provoked by the metal’s stubborn refusal to fit in the lock. On the third try, it fits, and she all but kicks the door open, nearly slamming it shut behind her. He looks up from the table, where he was working on something or the other on his laptop, and the way he isn’t even unfazed makes her anger worse. She doesn’t know how to explain it—doesn’t even know why it is that everything seems to infuriate her, everything feels wrong and overwhelming and there’s a hotness bubbling under her skin that doesn’t belong there and she needs to escape her own body because nothing feels right—but she’s too desperate to get the fury out that she doesn’t care. Instead, she drags him up from the chair by that stupid, idiotic, annoying silver chain he always wears, and something inside hopes he can feel the metal slice into his skin so that maybe he can feel some of her pain too.

“Rough day?” He tilts his head, and the soft, still calmness as if he’s used to this, as if he finds it funny, only make the flames scorching her bones hotter. “Shut up,” she hisses, because she can’t find a way to raise her voice when her throat feels like ash, and she strikes him and he doesn’t even flinch because he’s used to it. This is one of many old routines of theirs. Her emotions eventually became too much to quell like she’d tried to, and now manifested in explosive outbursts and mood swings. One moment she will be fine, calmly working. The next, she feels like sobbing, or screaming, like a different person has inhabited her body and forced her heart out of her chest and into the open. The worst is the rage. She feels like there’s magma being injected into her bloodstream, like her eyes are clouded with firesmoke and she needs to get it out, take it out on something, anything. He volunteered to be her punching bag. He’s used to getting pulled, tossed around, even before this became life. He said he was fine with it, and he seems to be. Sometimes, though, when one of them stays over at the other’s, she’ll walk to the kitchen at midnight for water and see him there, illuminated by only the filtered rays of the night and the soft yet painfully manufactured light of the open fridge, holding a cold soda can or water bottle or ice pack or whatever he can find at the moment to a bruise somewhere on his cheek or neck or shoulder and she will feel old guilt rise in her chest like a flicker of a younger girl for a fraction of a second. But then he meets her eyes briefly and she cannot find any sort of pain or emotion in general besides acknowledgment, and she no longer feels guilty because he has not given her any reason to. She brings this up, once, lying across her bed with her head hanging upside down off the side. It’s an offhand remark, almost a joke. He shrugs, sitting next to her on the floor. “Why are you feeling guilty? I literally volunteered and it’s not like you don’t have a reason to beat me up.” That conversation solidifies it for her, the fact that she should not feel regret or shame for this habit. On some level, too, she indulges, not only because it’s easy, but because there’s a small part of her that says he deserves it. —