Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I don’t really know where I’m going. I just know I needed to leave the party. I drank a little too much and I don’t like big crowds as much as people seem to think - it started feeling…overwhelming. The bumping of my elbow when someone walks by, the smell of alcohol everywhere, and my friends all ditching me for some hot guys.

I guess I can’t really blame them, they were good-looking, but I just didn’t feel like socializing anymore. I wanted some alone time.

The hiking trails I love to explore aren’t far from campus so I head there. It’s a beautifully cloudy day showcasing the spring that’s ahead, the chirping birds, and the sound of the wind keeping me company.

The hiking trails are serene and the woods are tranquil, helping me ease into relaxation. I feel my shoulders relax, my jaw unclench, and my body heave a relaxing sigh.

I let my thoughts wander and wrap around themselves as I follow the beaten trail this way and that. I don’t suppose I have an end goal in mind, I just keep walking. Thinking about the book I left in my dorm, or the mug of tea I know is sitting, dirty, on my homework papers. I think about the sweet boy that came by to return a book I lent to him, following up by asking me to dinner - I politely declined, feigning homework and a headache.

I keep walking, smelling the fresh air on this nice, chilly, but comfortable day, when I start to hear muffled voices pulling me back to the present of the trail and the trees. I move towards the direction the sound is coming from as quietly as possible. I crouch behind limbs and brush, giving me a full view of who the voices belong to.

I immediately see Bunny, his back is to the open and he’s standing fairly close to the drop-off not far behind him. I suspect these are the members of the Greek class (or cult, as everyone else calls it). I turn and look along the edge of the trees and spot the twins, standing utterly and completely still; a few feet over is the redhead, Francis, I think. My gaze falls on Richard, the only one I’ve truly had a conversation with. He lives down the hall from me and we exchange pleasantries from time to time.

But, I can’t remember the name of the one standing in front of Bunny. He’s tall, tall enough to make Bunny shrink back to the dangerously approaching drop not three feet from him.

I sit and puzzle through my thoughts, everyone seems to know of the greek cult but I can’t remember his name for the life of me. It isn’t until a moment later that I feel the hair on my arms and the back of my neck stand on end. I didn’t notice how quiet it is, even the wildlife of the woods seems to be silent.

I hear Bunny say something to the one in front of him, I can’t discern it.

“Henry…” The girl-twin says.

Henry - that’s his name.

Before I can think up my next thought, I watch as Henry lunges for Bunny with both hands. They connect to his chest as he pushes.

Pushes.

Off-off of…

My hand shoots to my mouth, quickly stifling the gasp surely about to give me away.

I just…he just…Bunny.

I rise from my crouch and stumble backward. Back and back. I wasn’t meant to see this. I shouldn’t have seen this. I shouldn’t be here.

My feet stop as I watch the others. No one dares to move, to breathe. They stare at Henry whose chest is heaving as he looks down over the cliff. Still, no one moves. Not until Henry turns and looks at everyone, his face pale, his hands trembling at his sides.

He starts to say something, to which I try to back away to get out when I step on a twig. The dead twig makes a resounding crack that turns everyone in my direction.

I panic and drop my hand from my mouth and will and plead my legs to move. I feel them stumble back a few steps but they shake so badly I fear I’ll fall over.

Henry starts walking in my direction and it feels too much like the grim reaper closing in on its prey, coming to collect the souls of the dead.

He pushes through the brush and limbs between us, surely scratching his skin and pulling at his clothes. He’s much larger up close, much more intimidating. I go completely still. My shaking and trembling stops at the mere proximity to which he stands.

He bends at the knees and waist and rests his hands on his knees so he’s at eye level with me.

I open my mouth but words elude me and I’m stuck opening and closing my mouth like a damn fish.

I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.

“Please…” I whisper breathlessly as Henry continues to stare at me with depthless blue eyes behind his glasses. “I…I won’t s-say anything…to anyone,” I say still whispering. This conversation is just between the two of us. The others seemed to stay where they were just watching us with blank, unmoving faces - masks. Far enough away that I doubt they can hear us.

Henry continues to stare at me and it makes me fidget - or it would if I wasn’t so frozen by fear.

“I-I swear…” I look over to the others and watch as Francis shakily lights a cigarette, blowing smoke through his nose.

“Henry,” Richard says from beside Francis, his face as blank as the others.

“I’m thinking,” Henry says impatiently, with the slightest hint of a bite as he stands to his full height, dwarfing me.

“Think faster, we need to get out of here.” The boy-twin chirps up from beside his sister.

“Charles.” His sister chides in a hushed tone.

“I w…I won’t tell a soul of what I saw…” I take a shaky breath, “please.”

“How do I know that?” He says in a low voice, one entirely too calm for someone who just…who just murdered someone.

“I won’t, I promise,” I repeat, “I swear, I won’t say any-”

“You’ve said that, but how do I know, how do we know?”

I feel tears spring to my eyes and my mouth opens but again fails to find words. I swear I won’t but how could they know that? It would be so much easier to…to silence me. Then they really wouldn’t have to worry about me.

Henry examines my face and finally says, “if you tell a single s-”

“I won’t!” I exclaim a little too loudly. “I won’t, I swear,” I repeat back in my normal soft whisper. Just a glimmer of relief flares in my body, just a faint glimmer.

“Jesus, Henry, are we really just going to tell her not to tell anyone and let her go? She’ll blab to the first person she sees” Charles says walking closer, his sister not far behind him.

Henry doesn’t look back at Charles but seems to examine me even closer. I know my eyebrows are pinched together and the tears are about to spill over my cheeks, but I hold his eye contact.

“She won’t tell,” he says in a hushed voice and at first I don’t think the others hear him. But I see Charles ball his fists at his side and Francis runs a shaky hand down his face, the bud of his cigarette still between his fingers.

Not another sound comes from anyone else. They take Henry’s word as final as they all file out of the brush and onto a trail, none of them sparing me a second glance except for Richard. He looks at me, the blank mask still covering his features before he continues walking with the rest of them.

I wait until I can’t see them before I breathe, properly breathe. I suck down gulps and gulps of air as if I was underwater that entire time. Breath after breath after breath. I drop to my knees, my legs finally falling me as my tears inevitably spill.

I sit there, for just a moment, completely numb yet feeling everything all at once. I replay it over and over in my mind.

Bunny. Henry. No one helping. They were all in on it.

Henry. He shoved Bunny off that edge. Pushed him. Murdered him.

I stand up, my legs protesting, and walk into that clearing everyone was occupying what felt like ages ago. Despite my brain telling me to run, run and find someone to help, tell them everything, I walk to the edge and look down.

I shouldn’t be surprised. Bunny’s body lay on the ground, his limbs at odd angles. I feel my tears stop flowing and I force myself to step away. I hear a small rustle of leaves behind me. I should turn around to make sure it’s not Henry coming to finish the job, or Charles even, but I freeze. Slowly, once the sound dies down, I turn around and see the empty trees looming ahead.

The sky is so overcast and grey, it already feels like it’s getting dark. Or maybe that’s just darkness clouding my mind. Maybe this is normal after someone goes through something traumatic. Maybe…

I shake my head and walk away from the drop. I walk away from Bunny and stick to my promise. Henry scares me and I don’t want to run into any of them ever again.

I start walking down the path I came down before everything. When I was just escaping a crowded party. When I was enjoying the coming spring weather. Now the clouds look like the promise of more winter.

The promise of more winter, that thought unsettles me for reasons I can’t describe.

I walk and walk and walk, trying against all impossible odds, to forget everything I just witnessed. Even though, I will never ever forget a single detail of what I saw. This will haunt me for the rest of my life.

—

I make it back to my dorm avoiding everyone that could have walked in my path. I’m thankful to whoever is above watching over me for not running into anyone I know. I think I would have said something I shouldn’t have.

I close the door and lean my full weight against it as it drags me down to the floor. I feel my body begin to shake as my tears well up again. I feel the sobs before I realize that I’m crying. I’m sobbing on the floor. Head between my knees and hand over my mouth so that no one hears me.

I don’t even bother with my clothes or even take off my shoes as my tears fall over my hand and drip onto the floor as I think of it all again. As I think of Bunny. Lying on the ground, cold, alone, dead.

He’ll never see his family again, he’ll never laugh again, he’ll never…he’ll never…

I bring my head up from between my knees and lean it against the door with a thud.

My chest hurts, my ribs are sore, and my body aches. I let myself slide so that I land on the floor, laying on my side.

“Why?” I whisper to myself as I feel tears drip off the bridge of my nose.

Henry’s blue eyes swim in my mind as I squeeze my eyes shut. My adrenaline is fading and my body is tired. I slowly feel myself drifting into unsettling sleep, my subconscious haunted and tormented.

Then, I’m back there. I’m back in the woods. Henry stands directly in front of me while the others watch with expressionless masks behind him. No one moves, and no one speaks. Upon closer inspection, I see that the others can’t speak. There’s smooth flesh covering their nose and mouths. Only their eyes bore into mine as they watch.

Fear surges through me as I crane my neck around and look behind me only to see the plunge of the cliff. My feet are backed to the very edge and I look back up at Henry. No flesh covering his nose or mouth, just his cruel, unfeeling face staring back at me. He doesn’t look like Henry at all but I know he is.

“What are you doing?” I ask, my voice just a whisper yet again.

Henry takes a step toward me and I have to shuffle my feet to avoid him stepping on them.

“Wait…please.”

My fear turns to acid in my veins and I feel like throwing up. I feel like crumpling to the ground and begging him to stop as he takes another small step toward me, my eyes on his feet.

My heels hang off as I look back up, just in time to see him smile a wicked, merciless, smile. His hands come up and I feel him shove. Shove just hard enough for me to lose my balance and…

I’m falling.

Gravity is a cruel joke as it pulls me closer and closer to the ground as if it wants me to die. I reach up to Henry standing on the edge looking down at me as I plummet to the bottom. The others join around him, all looking down on me as I fall…

I jolt awake so hard that I kick my solid wood bookshelf by my feet with a loud clunk. I sit up and wince as I rub my foot through my shoe.

My body is covered in a sheen of sweat and the sun is completely gone. Darkness floods my room, the only light coming in is from the yellow security lamp outside my window. The silence is eerie.

Suddenly short raps on the door scare me enough to flinch where I sit. I still and hope they go away without anymore-

More knocking sounds, this time a tad louder.

I slowly get up off the floor, my body sore and protesting. I wipe at my eyes and hope they don’t look as puffy as they feel. My throat hurts from crying and my foot throbs as I reach for the doorknob.

I turn and slowly crack the door and see tinted blue eyes behind glasses looking down at me. My body tenses up immediately and I briefly contemplate shutting the door in his face. He seems to know this.

“I just want to make sure you’re alright,” he says in a low, deep voice that should soothe me but only sets me more on edge.

His eyes are the same as the ones looking down at me as I fall off the overhang. I close my eyes, and the feeling of falling seems all too real again, as I look back into Henry’s eyes through the crack in my door.

Chapter Text

Everything in my body is telling me to close the door and act as if nothing has happened. But Henry’s blue eyes bore into my own, asking me to open the door without even needing to say anything.

Finally, after seeing how reluctant I am to let him in, he says, “might I come in?” He lilts the end of the phrase up like a question, but it feels more like a demand. Let me in. Open the door.

I look down and notice that he’s still in the same clothes he was in earlier - though I suppose I am too.

I look back up and open the door. Just wide enough for him to fit through before gently closing it without making a sound. For a brief moment, we’re standing in the dark, the yellow security lamp painting the outline of our silhouettes with a faint golden hue. My heart beats wildly at the thought of not being able to see him fully. The thought of his hands pushing Bunny. Pushing me.

He does nothing but watches me and it casts an eerie silence that wasn’t here before. I reach by him to turn on the lamp sitting on my desk. When the light comes on, I notice how close my face is to his arm and I watch as he examines me. I take my hand from the lamp and take a few cautionary steps back.

“I won’t tell anyone,” I whisper as I self-consciously cross my arms over my stomach.

“Are you okay?” He asks, in equal quiet, completely ignoring my statement.

My eyes snap up to his. “Am I okay?” I ask a little louder, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. “You k-” I take a moment and put reigns on my sudden and slightly surprising temper threatening to unleash. “I’m fine, I won’t tell anyone,” I say, neutralizing my face and showing a mask of nothing. No emotion, just like the others.

“Liar.” He shoves his hands into his pant pockets, rocking back on his heels.

“I won’t-” I start.

“No, I know you won’t tell anyone; you’re lying about being fine.”

I just stand there, staring at him. “How do you think I should feel?”

“I’m not going to sit here and tell you how and what to feel,” he says with a bored tone.

“Then why ask such an obvious question?” I haven’t moved from where I stand, I haven’t dared - neither has he.

“Did you know Bunny? Personally, I mean?” His question had no bite as he pulls his hands from his pockets and crosses his arms over his chest, looking down at his shoes.

I feel myself deflate even more than I already am at the reminder of why he’s here. Bunny’s dead. He’s gone. “No, he was always off with either Cloke at some party or off with your greek cult.”

“Cult,” Henry says with a short laugh through his nose.

I stare at him for a moment as he continues to examine his shoes. I can practically see the thoughts racing through his head but I don’t even try to decipher them. I heave a sigh and walk over to my bed, sitting down, and facing Henry. I push off my old tennis shoes and leave them on the floor.

“Are you okay?” I ask, leaning against the wall, hugging my legs into my chest.

He finally looks up at me with cold, calculating eyes. He remains silent.

Choosing to fill the silence, I continue, “I mean, normally, someone who just murdered their best friend would be a little shaken up after.”

He remains silent for a moment, but this silence doesn’t unsettle me. This silence speaks more words than either of us could right now. And I get it, Henry is grieving, but I’m not entirely sure it’s regret that clouds his eyes as he looks at some faraway point. “I suppose I’ll take a page from your book and say, ‘I’m fine’.” The air quotes he put around the phrase ‘I’m fine’ was unnecessary.

Before I can offer a retort, he takes a few steps over to the small table by my window with my turn table on it. I watch as he lazily runs a finger over the various knobs and dials. He looks up at the shelves sitting behind the table and files through my records.

The movement seems far too casual for these circumstances. I’m about to open my mouth to speak when he says, “you don’t strike me as a Bach fan.”

Completely thrown off guard, I close my mouth and tilt my head slightly to the side. Why is he here, looking through my records? Is he scared to go back and sit by himself, alone? Is he scared to sleep? Fear of nightmares turning him into an insomniac. Though I suppose he could be already, I wouldn’t put it past him.

I watch as he pulls out a disc and examines it. He slides it back into the cardboard sleeve and files through the others. “You seem to appreciate the classics,” this time pulling out a Tchaikovsky record.

“I suppose I do,” I say weary of the change in the conversation. What does this have to do with…I don’t even want to think about it. I let myself watch Henry as he moves along to the books stacked in all the places I could get them to fit. Some thrown in stacks in the corner, some sitting on the bookshelf, and some piled on my desk.

I watch as he pulls a book from the top of a stack on the floor that reaches up past his knees, the movement making the stack rock traitorously. I catch a glimpse of the cover as he opens it, Crime and Punishment.

“Dostoevsky is interesting.” He briefly fans through the pages before closing it and looking at the back. “Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”

I recognize the quote from the book to know it’s not on the back cover. His flawless quotation leaves me fairly speechless. “Interesting choice of quote,” I say letting it sink in, letting the meaning fill the silence of the small room.

“It’s one of my favorites,” he says in a whisper, just loud enough for me to hear. He blinks a few times as if released from a trance. He puts the book back on top of the stack, giving it one last look, before walking towards the door.

I don’t bother moving from my position on my bed, as he turns the knob. I don’t know why I feel the need to repeat this but I do anyway, “I won’t tell anyone.”

“Why?” He asks, the knob still turned in his hand, but the door remains closed.

Why? Excellent question. I should scream for help, tell the police, tell someone here at the college. But I can’t. I won’t. Is it because I fear for my life? Or is it because of-

My thoughts get cut off as the door swings open and he steps out past the threshold. My silence must have been answer enough. He turns back to me, the light from the hallway flooding into my room, and I think, for a fraction of a second, that he’s going to say something. But, he seems to think better of it, because he closes the door behind him, leaving me in complete and utter silence.

I remain where I am, on my bed, sitting in the faint light of my cheap lamp. I look over to the silhouetted pile of books where Crime and Punishment sits. I stare at it for a moment and eventually get up, walk over, and grab the book.

I open to the first page and begin reading. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve read this book, but I’m far from interested in sleep. The nightmare still haunts me, the hands - Henry’s hands - pushing me off into the ravine. Falling.

I shake my head and curl up in a blanket, leaning against the wall as I read. Page after page, thought after thought. I thought that maybe if I read and distract myself with a favorite book, I wouldn’t think about it. And that remains fairly true…until it doesn’t. Until I realize that I’m not thinking of Bunny, of his body lying at the bottom of that overhang. Body…body at odd angles.

I put the book down, I can’t even see the words through the blur of my tears. I shakily wipe them away and continue reading. My shaking becomes progressively more aggressive despite the warmth coming from the radiator.

After some time, I notice the light from my window, fading into a dusty blue hue as the sun begins to rise. I never really looked at the small digital clock on my bookshelf. It’s almost six in the morning.

I put the book down and walk over to my window, I freeze as my eyes trail over the snow now coating the ground. I don’t even remember it beginning to snow. I suppose I should have seen the snowflakes on Henry’s shoulders or in his hair when he first arrived.

The snow is peaceful and untouched, glimmering with the sun rising, blue and gray through the clouds. I don’t even see the grass poking up through the snow. I watch as heavy flakes continue to fall, and early risers tread through the snow to get to their destination.

I sit back down on my bed, not even the slightest bit tired. I hope that my dreams won’t be haunted by nightmares every time I try to sleep.

I feel like I sit there for thirty minutes but I notice how bright my room is now. I look up and see the bright red numbers on the clock that show 7:30 am - my class starts in 30 minutes.

I look down at my wrinkled clothes from yesterday and frown. I start stripping, trying to find any clean clothes I can - I really need to do laundry.

I find a pair of jeans at the bottom of a drawer, they don’t particularly fit around my waist. I throw on a grey turtleneck sweater, tucking it into my jeans as I grab a belt and thread it through the belt loops of my pants, synching my jeans to my waist. I throw on a white knit cardigan for layers before slinging my winter coat over as I put my feet in my old winter boots.

I grab my bag, slinging it over my shoulder, and face the door.

I’m going to class. I’m going to class. While Bunny’s body lies dead at the bottom of the overhang - I’m going to class. Like nothing happened.

Despite the fact that I usually reside on the side of being a realistic optimist, I’ve already decided that today is not going to be a good day.

I turn around and grab Crime and Punishment off of my bed and walk out the door. The snow is cold and the wind hits me with a bite, but I hardly notice it. The sidewalks are being shoveled and I try to stay out of the way. When I sit down for class, my fingers are still numb and the end of my nose is undoubtedly bright red.

Classes go on as usual as if everything is normal and fine. And I guess I told Henry that I’m fine, so I should act like it, right?

Wrong.

Nothing is fine. I’m sitting in the cafeteria with a tray of mildly edible food in front of me and I can’t even stomach the smell of it. Everyone chatters and laughs and there are boys throwing snowballs at each other outside and everyone is just so happy. So painfully happy that I want to cry.

Why did I have to be there at that time? I wish I would have just stayed at the party and I wish I would have just decided to go back to my dorm instead of going for a stupid walk. I would have avoided all of this. All of them.

I look up and see Richard walk in with Francis right behind him, the bags under Richard’s eyes are visible from here.

I can’t stand the thought of talking to them, to anyone. So, I get up, discarding my tray into the trash by the door, and walk out before anyone has the chance to see me.

I turn the corner and head to the mailroom, just looking for a possible distraction. When I turn to enter I stop myself before ramming into a tall dark winter coat who stops as abruptly as I do.

I look up and see Henry’s face resting behind his glasses looking down at me. He doesn’t look how he did last night. Not just his change of clothes, but he looks harder, colder even, almost unfeeling. This is how I’ve seen him when catching glimpses of him walking across campus before yesterday.

“Sorry,” I mumble and take a step back. The two other people in the mail room walk out looking at envelopes in their hands, leaving us alone.

“You should watch where you’re going.” He doesn’t say it with a bite, it’s more just a monotone statement.

I open my mouth to say something useless when he sidesteps me and walks out. I don’t move until I hear the door close behind me and I finally turn around and watch his figure retreat down the hallway through the glass windows of the door.

I blink before turning back around and walking to my mailbox. There wasn’t even any mail to distract me. My parents will sometimes send postcards of whatever exotic vacation they’re on - at least they do when they think of it.

They paid my tuition and set me up to live without them so that they wouldn’t be burdened by me. I’m not particularly upset about it, at least they let me do whatever I want, but it would be nice to receive some form of paternal affection. Especially through times when I can't even sleep without fear that my subconscious will terrorize me.

But then I think back to the endless criticisms I seem to get from them about how ‘I don’t need to be so strong-minded’ and ‘I just need to look good for a rich husband someday,’ and I can’t say that I miss them.

Without any new mail, I go back to my room, set my bag down, and just…sit there. The silence creeps in on me and I feel like I’m going to go insane.

I get up and pick a record at random - Beethoven - and lay it down on the turn table, setting the needle along the edge as it spins. His moonlight sonata fills the room with the soft piano, quelling the insufferable silence.

I sit back down and let my eyes drift closed as I let the music fill the room and my thoughts.

Chapter Text

The next few days go by as painfully as expected.

My bad dreams don’t fade away, they continue to haunt me. Henry keeps popping up where I don’t expect him and I can’t seem to get his eyes out of my mind, awake or asleep. I’ve been so distracted that I haven’t talked to my friends since the day of Bunny’s…death. They’ve reached out, asking if I’m okay, to which I answer characteristically with a ‘I’m fine’ and go on leaving them confused by my recent bout of isolation. I feel as though I’ve unintentionally pushed them away, but I can’t even bare my own thoughts, I definitely don’t want to talk to someone who can’t know what I’m going through.

I’ve almost finished reading through Crime and Punishment. When my nightmares plague me, I stay awake with my lamp on and my book in my lap. I suppose all the hours I spend awake give me the chance to read and read and read.

The quote Henry said that night now underlined in blue pen with a sticky tab hanging off the page.

'Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.'

Everyone knows the genius that is Henry Winter, but…a deep heart? His deep heart? What pain is he feeling after Bunny’s death? I think he feels more than he lets on. It’s like he doesn’t allow himself to feel and show it. Or maybe he truly feels nothing at all?

I get dressed to head to class, the snow hasn’t slowed since that night; piles and piles gather on the grass from the shovelers - or where the grass would be if I could see it.

My classes go by in a blur, I’m barely keeping my head afloat through all of the assignments that I never feel like doing. Only one teacher has expressed any kind of concern and that’s only because my A has dropped to an A- and he doesn’t want to see a student 'like me’ drop with the rest of the class. To which my response was a quiet apology, him politely patting my shoulder, and me walking out.

I sit in the cafeteria again, knowing that I should eat, but barely being able to stomach anything. I push around the suspicious meatloaf on my plate and take an occasional bite of seasonless mashed potatoes. It’s sweltering in here to combat the frigid cold outside - too much in my opinion.

I hear a tray being placed on the table in front of me. I look up and see Richard sitting down, shouldering off his coat and adjusting in his seat.

I just sit and look at him until he feels uneasy enough to speak. “Hey,” he offers me a smile but I notice that it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Hi,” I offer back. Richard and I have talked only a handful of times, so it’s not all that odd for him to sit and talk with me. But, ever since Bunny, none of them acknowledge my presence, they don’t even look at me. Except for Henry.

“You okay?” He asks as he occupies himself with the food on his tray, he takes a sip of some bitter-smelling coffee and winces a little.

“Yeah,” I say shortly, trying to add a shrug to my shoulders to seem more nonchalant, though I know it looks stiff and uneasy.

He doesn’t push me anymore on it. He simply nods and still doesn’t meet my eyes. After taking a bite of meatloaf he puts his fork down as he grimaces, “this is shit.” He pushes his tray away from him and finally looks up at me.

I realize I’m staring, I look down at my own food and say, “yeah, I wouldn’t call this edible.”

The silence looms over the table, it doesn’t feel awkward, but it feels…heavy, and sad.

“I still see him when I sleep,” he says almost too soft for me to catch, but I hear him.

My hand freezes, the fork becoming a weight in my hand. He’s plagued by nightmares too. Of course he is though, I would be worried if he wasn’t.

I want to tell him about mine, I want to tell him that he’s not alone. But, instead, all I say is, “I’m sorry.”

He blinks a few times before letting his eyes look around the cafeteria, “No…no, I’m sorry for bringing it up. I’m sure you’re trying to forget about it like I am.” He looks back at me.

“I won’t be forgetting about it anytime soon whether I want to or not. So…” I trail off, I don’t really know what I was going to say.

He starts to speak but a hand comes down on his shoulder. I look up and see Francis’s smiling face as he takes the seat next to Richard. “Hey Richard,” he turns and looks at me, “I’m sorry, I don’t think I got your name.” Of course you didn’t, there wasn’t really much time between everything that was going on for me to properly introduce myself.

My cheeks heat at his casualness and his anxious smile - it’s not a big smile, it’s a simple soft smile, but it unnerves me, makes my chest feel hollow.

“Lizzy,” I say, trying to offer a soft smile in return.

“Nice to meet you,” he says then turns back to Richard. “Do you have the Greek homework done? I haven’t done it yet and I don’t think I’ll have time.”

I busy myself with my tray of food that I don’t plan on eating especially now that it’s gone cold. They continue to talk but I don’t listen - just dull chatter about their Greek homework.

A dark figure sits down on Richard’s other side, no food in hand. Henry leans back in his chair, stuffing a pair of gloves into the pockets of his coat.

“Henry, have you finished the Greek homework?” Francis asks leaning in closer to Richard to reach Henry.

Henry’s eyes find mine and then nods, saying a simple, “yeah, I finished it last night.”

The greek cult has a way of making people feel invisible. Like they are the superior ones in the room and they are the only ones that should matter. I don’t blame them, if I was near the level of intellect they are, I would be too.

I shouldn’t pretend that I’m not intellectually smart, I am. I’m just not multilingual and debating over which great philosopher had it right.

The three boys converse amongst themselves, not even recognizing my presence. Deciding to leave, I stand and begin putting my coat back on.

“Leaving already?” Richard asks, looking up.

“Yeah, I have a paper to finish,” I lie. I already finished that paper, though, to my dismay, it’s probably worth a C.

“Oh, alright, I’ll talk to you later then,” he says, offering me a smile. A smile that makes me feel less alone and that someone else is also struggling. Despite the fake chatter and smiles of Francis and Henry, Richard’s presence has a comforting feel.

I give a small smile back and walk out of the cafeteria, only to turn and look once more at the table. Henry’s eyes meet mine before he turns back to Francis and says something.

I walk out and leave the building through the double doors into the snow-chilled day. The snow has turned intermittent, but it's still far too cold for it to begin melting, clouds still hanging low in the sky.

I walk back to my dorm, done for the day. I don’t bother to do much besides drop my bag on the floor behind my door and lay down in bed.

My winter coat still wrapped tightly around me, my boots still on, when I drift off into what I know is going to be uneasy rest.

—

I wake with a jolt before I hit the ground, my body covered in sweat as I sit up. It’s so hot in here, I instantly remove my coat and boots with shaking hands. I’ve sweat through my sweater and decide to toss that to the foot of my bed too.

Laying in my bra and jeans I let myself breathe. The feeling of falling doesn’t ever leave until I’ve distracted myself - typically with my book.

I turn my head and look at the clock, glowing in the dark, two in the morning. This is the longest I’ve slept in a while. I missed dinner but I don’t mind, I still don’t particularly like the smell and taste of food, though I choke it down as much as I can.

I sit up and run a hand over my face. Henry’s eyes loomed over me, within reach but pushing me just far enough to doom me.

I wonder what Bunny thought before he hit the ground. Was he thinking about Henry? About the betrayal of his best friend pushing him off a ledge? Did he know he was going to die? Maybe he thought about Marion?

I shake my head and stand up before I get completely lost in the spiraling blackhole of my thoughts. I stand up and walk over to my bag, fishing out Crime and Punishment, turning on my lamp, and sitting back down on my bed.

I just stare at the cover. Mind sweeping back to Henry sliding his fingers over the cover, over the pages as he fanned through. The quote.

'The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.'

Too much knowledge can be a burden.

I open the book to the dogeared page and begin reading. The words don’t do much for a distraction. All I can think of is Henry now, anytime I think about this book, I just think of the quote he said and the way he held the book. The way his eyes scanned the cover and a faint, the faintest, twitch of the corner of his mouth that I would have missed if I were not looking right at him.

I’m so lost in my thoughts that I don’t even realize once I’ve reached the end. The last two sentences of the epilogue, I know by heart.

'But that is the beginning of a new story - the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his transition from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is over.'

Is Bunny’s present story over? Was his initiation into a new unknown life successful? I hope his new story is better, much better than this one.

The sun is rising and I notice a golden hue coming through my window. I get up and look out to see a cloudless sky and the sun beginning to peak over the horizon. Will the snow melt?

The snow that’s covering Bunny’s body.

Then it clicks.

Oh. That’s why no one has really said much about it all. There have been murmurs going about the school of Bunny’s absence but nothing has come of it because there isn’t a body. It’s buried under all that snow.

There have been people asking around about whether or not they’ve seen Bunny and people shrug it off as if he’s just been on some week-long bender. They don’t worry about it because there hasn’t been a body to find.

Nausea creeps its way into my stomach as I think about how long it will be until the snow melts.

I step away from the window and sit down in the chair slightly pulled out from my desk.

How convenient.

A bitter taste forms in my mouth and I just sit there, watching the early morning sunlight glitter off the snow.

After a minute or two, I decide to get up and shower before my class at nine.

I peel the rest of my clothes off my body, now dry after my sweaty, nightmare-filled sleep, and wrap a towel around myself, heading to the shower.

Despite the cold temperature, the shower doesn’t make me feel any better. It helps wake me up, but I still feel nauseous thinking of the snow.

I twist and flip my towel up and over my head to dry my hair as I find something to wear. I have more to choose from since I finally did my laundry but I still don’t pay much attention to what I put on.

I take my hair down and run my comb through it. It’s going to freeze the moment I walk outside…I can’t bother to care.

When I walk outside, my hair does indeed freeze, but it thaws quickly as I walk into the heat of my classes, which fly by throughout the day.

When I finish my last class, I walk towards the mailroom which happens to be by Dr. Roland’s office. Richard sees me through the window of an office door and waves as he stands, walking over to me with a half-drunk, cheap cup of coffee in his hands.

“Hey,” he says kindly.

“Hey,” I offer back with a soft smile.

His eyes scan my face and seem to take note of the lack of sleep. Perhaps it’s the bags under my eyes, my wild clothing options, or maybe my unkempt hair.

“I didn’t mean to pull you from your work,” I say in an attempt to draw his attention away from my questionable appearance.

“I needed a minute away,” he says reassuring me. I nod and look down at his cup, trying to think of something to say when he says, “there’s a party tonight, you should come.”

I didn’t expect that to come out of his mouth. “Oh, I-I don’t know, parties-”

“I’ll be there,” he says with a soft, charming smile - it still doesn’t reach his eyes.

I open my mouth to object but I end up surprising myself by saying, “sure.”

“Great, I’ll swing by your room then.”

“Okay,” I smile and we bid each other farewell, he goes back to work while I continue to the mailroom.

For the first time in a few days, there’s something in my chest other than aching. I actually feel excited to go with Richard to whoever’s party this is.

A postcard is sitting in my mailbox, waiting for me…a postcard from some tropical island I’ve never heard of. I flip it over and see my mother’s cursive scrawl on the back.

'Love Mom and Dad'

They didn’t even bother writing me a note this time. Normally the back has a short note wishing me well, hoping that my grades are good, and ‘sending love your way’. But the back just has those four words on it.

I sigh and throw it in my bag, I’ll add it to the others when I get back to my room.

“You don’t seem happy,” I hear from a deep voice to my side.

I turn as Henry puts a small envelope into the inside pocket of his jacket and faces me, leaning into the wall of mailboxes. My heart rate picks up as I see the eyes that haunt my dreams.

“I’m fine,” I say already forgetting about the postcard.

“Are you ever anything but fine?” He asks with a small humored smile.

“No, not really,” I say quietly. Why does he care if I’m fine or not? All he should care about is whether I’m going to blab to someone about what I saw.

“You’re not sleeping well, are you?” His pointing this out makes me deflate even more. I know I look rough, there’s no need to point it out.

“Why do you care?” I surprise myself with a slight bite in my tone. “You just want me to stay quiet,” this time I say it quieter, still a little bite.

He doesn’t reply, he just chews on the inside of his cheek as he sticks his hands in his pockets.

I don’t wait for him to reply, I turn and walk out of the mailroom and start back to my dorm. I would be happy if I didn’t have to face any of the greek students anymore. Maybe I could convince myself that I dreamt everything up and that it never actually happened.

Though, I feel unhappy with the idea of not knowing Richard. Despite how broken he might be feeling, he’s been nice to me. He even invited me to a party, I don’t want to overlook that small act of kindness.

I feel a small smile tug at my lips and for the first time in a week, it’s not forced. 

Chapter Text

I get back to my dorm and put my bag down. It’s not even six yet, empty time looming ahead waiting to be filled until Richard comes by. He never specified what time he was coming, but I assume it’ll be later.

I lay down on my bed and sprawl out. I could read, but the book I started a few weeks ago no longer interests me and I already finished Crime and Punishment. Before I can think about what to fill my time with, I feel my eyes slowly start to droop. I could work on homework from today. Though, I’m so tired. Mostly attributed to my lack of sleep and nightmare-filled subconscious.

My thoughts all morph into one as I allow myself to slowly fade into sleep.

I’m back. Henry in front of me and the others behind him. I try not to back up towards the drop but no matter how hard I urge my legs towards Henry, my feet betray me and step backward.

I step back and back, my legs trembling and my breath coming in irregular gasps. Tears blur my vision and the blue of Henry’s eyes fills my sight, everything is so blue. So blue, as I fall, just as I have in the past. I’m falling and thinking not of Henry, not of the people close to me, I’m thinking about Dostoevsky.

‘His initiation into a new unknown life’.

My new unknown life.

I jolt awake as I usually do, once again covered in sweat.

Knocking pulls me out of the remaining tendrils of my dream. I get up and open the door to see Richard. I didn’t notice the darkness of my room or the time.

“You alright?” He asks, taking in my appearance. I still haven’t quite slowed my breathing and I’m sure I look more disheveled than earlier.

“Uhh, yeah, let me change my shirt,” I say leaving the door open for him to come in. I turn my lamp on and rifle through drawers until I find an old, baggy, dark green and white striped button-up shirt.

I turn around as Richard occupies himself with a stack of books by the foot of my bed. I shrug on my shirt and button upwards leaving a few at the top undone. Tucking it into my jeans I turn around and Richard rises.

“Sorry about that, I didn’t mean to doze off,” I say grabbing my coat.

“It’s alright,” he says with indifference.

We walk out and I shut the door behind me. I already tell myself that I’m going to let go and have fun tonight. I’m going to find the first sign of alcohol and drink until I can’t feel anything anymore, can’t think anymore. Until I can finally breathe again.

This is a terrible coping style but I don’t think I care. Not right now, not tonight.

We walk out of the dorm building and through the snow, though the sun was out today, snow has already begun falling again in small, tiny flakes lightly dusting the cleared sidewalks.

We walk a little ways, both of us hunkering down into our coats to combat the freezing air, neither of us feeling the need to fill the silence.

We finally walk up to another dorm building, we know we’re in the right spot because we hear the music from down the sidewalk beating and booming over the silent night. We walk up to the door, people lingering outside despite the chill. When we walk in, someone, an upperclassman most likely, comes up and claps Richard on the back and says, “Rich, good to see you, rule of the party, you have to take a pill from our contribution before you can join in the fun.” He motions to a glass bowl with an assortment of different shapes, sizes, and colors of pills. There’s absolutely no way to tell what is what with them all mixed like this.

“Alright,” Richard says as he brushes off the upperclassman’s hand and walks over to the bowl. He examines the bowl but shakes his head as he reaches for a couple. He hands one to me, it’s a red capsule.

“What is it?” I ask uselessly over the boom of the music.

He shrugs, “I have no idea, but I don’t think I really care,” he pops the pill into his mouth and swallows. I follow suit.

What’s the worst that could happen?

The crowds of people talking, dancing, and smoking make this room warm despite the constant opening and closing of the door. Leaving our coats somewhere by the door, Richard and I weave through people as we make our way over to the multiple beer kegs and some nicer alcohol on a fold-out card table.

“Who’s party is this?” I ask.

“No idea, Judy told me about it,” he replies. He reaches for a cup and fills it, handing it over to me. He then fills his own and raises it to mine, “cheers,” he says.

The beer tastes stale and warm but despite it being not the most appetizing, I drink it anyway, hoping it’ll still do the trick. Without thinking, I drain my cup before lowering it down to refill. Richard just watches me and then follows suit, draining his cup as well.

He cringes slightly as he swallows the last bit. “This is disgusting, honestly,” he says looking behind him to the fold-out card table with the liquor. He looks back at me and raises an eyebrow.

I smile and nod as we walk over and I grab something clear, not really caring what it is while I pour more than the recommended amount. Richard does the same with brown liquor, whiskey maybe?

We ‘cheers’ again and we take a sip. I wince as the gin hits my throat and burns all the way down. But it feels good.

Richard looks over my shoulder and leans into my ear so that I can hear him over the music, “I’ll be right back.” I nod and he walks past me into another room.

I turn around and survey the crowd on the dance floor and around it, looking for familiar faces - more like looking out for familiar faces. I don’t particularly want to-

“Lizzy?” I hear to my left.

I turn and see Lisa - one of my friends that I ditched that day at the party. I try to think of how I can get away but she definitely sees me, waving as she starts walking towards me.

My stomach drops and my heart physically hurts as she walks over. What am I going to say to her? I’m not drunk enough. I take a couple of gulps from my gin, burning my throat, still not emptying the cup.

“Where have you been? Kim and Heather told me they saw you a couple of days ago but we haven’t really seen you in ages.” I can smell the alcohol and smoke on her breath.

“I-I’ve just been really busy with classes and…” I trail off. And trying not to think about the murder of a boy. Trying to drink enough that I forget about the blue eyes that find refuge in my nightmares.

Lisa starts fidgeting with the cup in her hand as she looks down. “Oh, yeah, I just wanted to make sure you’re okay…” it’s her turn to trail off before she follows up with, “did you come alone or with someone?”

I contemplate telling her that I came alone, “I came with Richard.” When I notice the name not clicking in her mind, I say, “Papen, Richard Papen.”

“Oh, he’s that guy that hangs out with those Greek kids, right?” Those greek kids.

“Yeah,” I answer taking another swig or two from my plastic cup.

“Are you guys…like…a thing?”

“Oh,” her question catches me off guard, “oh no, we just…” are both trying to forget about the horrors we’ve witnessed and have found it’s nice to be with people who share your burdens, “we’re just friends.” I keep my face blank, not even bothering to fake a smile.

“Okay, cool…” she sips her drink and I sip mine, “well, I just wanted to say hi.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I try my best to offer her a smile but she seems to know it’s fake because I swear I see pity flash in her eyes for a split second. It makes me uncomfortable and a little angry.

“Hey, sorry, I saw someone walk in…” Richard stops when he looks at Lisa.

“Anyway, I’ll leave you guys to the party,” she says turning and walking away. I watch her walk into another room - no doubt where the stoners are by the smoke that billows out when she opens the door.

“Who was that?” He asks, following my gaze.

I turn to look at him and that’s when I feel the effects of the drink. My vision is a little slow and I feel tingly and slightly dizzy. “Just a friend,” I say as I readjust myself so I don’t lose my balance. The gin is hitting faster than I expected.

“Oh, okay,” he says taking my cup and tipping more gin into it as he does the same with his. He doesn’t give me as much as I poured myself the first time, so I decide - against better judgment - to chug it.

I finish and wipe the corners of my mouth with my forefinger and thumb as I set the cup down on the table. The corner of Richard’s mouth twitches into a half smile as he does the same. I think Richard would do whatever I told him to, which is a scary enough thought.

The music thrums on and I take his hand and drag him to the cluster of bodies in the middle of the room jumping and dancing, despite his protests of how he doesn’t like to dance and doesn’t want to be in the middle of this sweaty circle of drunks. Everything is starting to feel so much lighter now and I don’t feel quite so tired or sad. I feel happy for the first time in what feels like a while - despite the awkward conversation with Lisa.

Richard and I follow along with whatever the people around us are doing as they dance and sing to the music. The temperature here is drastically warmer than where we were, I don’t know if it’s the booze, the pill, or just the heat bouncing from body to body.

Aiming to relieve the heat around me, the thought of unbuttoning my shirt begins to sound appealing.

Fuck it. I don’t care.

Right as I begin untucking and unbuttoning, I look over toward the wall and see a tall, brooding, figure with blue eyes. He’s watching my every move.

I decided that I really don’t care as I finish unbuttoning the rest of my shirt refusing to look away from him as he watches me. Not knowing if he’s a figment of my imagination or not, I turn back to Richard who also watches my every move. Looking me up and down, he grabs me and we begin to dance.

I turn around and let his body envelop mine. Despite the heat of the room, his body provides warmth against me, one that’s comforting and safe. His hands come and rest on my waist, mine resting on top of them as we sway to the music, our bodies glued together.

I look up as we turn and watch Henry, his eyes unyielding to my own. I feel Richard guiding my body with his. If he moves forward, I move forward, if he moves backward, I move backward. The feeling of his hands roaming down to my hips and up, grazing the side of my ribcage sends chills throughout my body. Henry still refusing to look away.

I know my cheeks are bright red but I can blame that on the gin. Or the pill. I laugh at the supposition of my behavior, very unlike me.

I let my head fall back onto Richard’s shoulder as his head falls into the crook of my neck, his breath tingling against my ear making me release a sharp breath. I close my eyes and reach my hand up and rest it on the back of his neck as we continue swaying and moving. Our hips glued together in synchronization.

I pull my hand down, grazing against his jaw and finally resting it back on top of his hand. His hands gripping me tighter as I feel his breathing become slightly more erratic. I open my eyes and see the space Henry was standing to be empty. So was it just my imagination?

I try to ignore the pang of disappointment as the song ends and Richard spins me around to face him. His cheeks are rosy red either from the liquor or the dancing, I’m not sure. “I’m going to get some more to drink, want anything?” His face is close to mine as we try to catch our breaths, his speech slurring slightly, showing signs of the beginning dregs of drunkenness.

“Surprise me,” I say smiling. I watch him walk off, the bodies around me dancing again to the next song. Without the warmth of Richard's body behind me and the ice of Henry’s gaze on me, I walk away from the dancing and find an empty spot along the wall. I let my head lean back and lull against the sturdy surface.

The wood-paneled wall offers to cool me down as I wipe away the beads of sweat near my hairline with the back of my hand. I try to look around for Richard but only see faces I don’t recognize.

Finally, I see him making his way over to me with two plastic cups in his hands, I work to pull my heavy head off the wall. He hands one to me, and I take a sip - more gin.

“I poured the last of the gin for you,” he says taking a sip of his.

“Thanks,” I say growing used to the burn of it as it trails down my throat. I don’t even really like gin. The uncanny relation between the smell of the clear liquid and a sterile doctor's office has deterred me from it in the past.

“Richard my boy, there you are!” A slurred voice comes from my right, a drunk Charles with a half-empty bottle stumbles up and hangs an arm around Richard’s shoulder.

“Charles, I thought you were w…” Richard begins saying but I tune them out - which is much easier with liquor in my system.

I hear them talk but I don’t listen to what they say as I sip more gin. I lean my head back against the wall and close my eyes. I imagine that I’m back on the dance floor, Richard’s body practically holding me upright while Henry watches us.

I wish I wouldn’t have looked away, maybe then he would have still been watching. Watching as Richard pushed into me and let his hands roam my body. I know his lips were close to my neck and I wouldn’t have objected if they found a spot to stay. I probably would have arched into him as he kissed, sucked, and tasted. I would have forced my eyes open, forced Henry to watch.

You don’t scare me, I’d say to him. You don’t scare me even though you haunt my every dream.

My body heats as I open my eyes, my vision very blurry until I readjust. I spot a body in front of me, watching Richard and Charles talk. Richard now holds the bottle as they speak what I’m assuming is not English. If it is English, I’m more drunk or high or whatever than I thought.

As if noticing that I’m back in the present, Henry turns and looks at me. I guess it really was him and not a hallucination.

“You look miserablyoutofplace,” I slur at him.

He says nothing but he doesn’t turn away either. I finish my drink and set the cup on the nearest surface.

“You’re also miserablyunpleasant,” I try to enunciate the words but they continue to slur.

A short laugh escapes through his nose. I didn’t know laughs could sound bitter. “So I’ve been told.”

I narrow my eyes at him and open my mouth to tell him exactly what I think when he says to Richard and Charles, “I think I’m going to take Lizzy for some fresh air and probably back to her room.”

Richard turns and looks at me, “are you okay?” I wish the worry in his eyes made me smile but instead, it makes my chest hurt.

“She’s fine, just very drunk,” He says before I can say a word.

“Aren’t we all?” Charles says a little too loudly.

I feel Henry tug my arm towards the door, I don’t even get time to say goodbye to Richard before I’m trying not to stumble and fall over at the pace at which I’m being dragged. Henry opens the door and we step outside.

The cold, crisp air feels like a slap in the face, my unbuttoned shirt blows open from the icy breeze. “My coat,” I say trying to turn around and go back inside. Before I can try to lose Henry’s grip, he lets go and hands me a warm piece of clothing.

My coat!

I quickly wrap it around myself, hunkering down into the warmth, feeling myself slightly, slightly sober up. Still not enough to keep from stumbling down the three steps to the sidewalk.

Henry’s hand latches onto the top of my arm and keeps me upright as I slip on the lightly snow-dusted sidewalk.

“I know how to walk,” I say trying to twist out of his grip.

He releases my arm and puts his hands in his pockets as he starts walking. Not wanting to be left behind, I start following him.

“I wanted to stay,” I say, stumbling from my foot hitting the heel of my other foot. Henry doesn’t even try to catch me at this point.

“You’re drunk and unpredictable.”

“I’m drunk and having fun.”

“Having fun grinding against Richard?” He asks with a small laugh that felt like it was directed at me personally.

My cheeks heat and I look down. I was having fun dancing with Richard, I enjoyed every minute of his hands on my body and his attention solely on me. “Yes,” I say shortly.

I don’t look up because, for some reason, I don’t want to see the look on his face. I don’t want to see the tick of his jaw, the cold look in his eye, the hard-set features of his face. I just don’t want to face him.

He lets me go first into the dorm building but I doubt it’s out of courtesy or chivalry and more just wanting to make sure I don’t run back to the party or fall.

I walk to my room, his presence slightly noticeable as he silently follows. The hallway moves with every step, too fast one second, too slow the next. I stumble a few times, feeling the wall support my weight.

I finally find my door, missing the knob a few times before successfully turning it. My toe catches on the threshold and I feel myself tumble forward, the ground coming closer into view but I feel hands hold me up.

Henry rights me up with a short, clipped sigh. He walks me over a few steps to my desk, reaching over to turn my lamp on.

With one hand on the desk, I stand up, swaying embarrassingly, as I shoulder off my coat letting it pile around my feet. I look over and my bed is practically begging me to come to it. Just a few steps and I manage to barely make it on there, immediately laying down.

I hear Henry’s heavy footsteps, I let my eyes flutter closed, but I don’t fall asleep yet. I hear movement directly to my left and hear the unmistakable sound of a needle coming down on a record. I wait a moment before I hear Chopin’s Nocturne.

I pry open my eye and see Henry now sitting in my desk chair, my pile of clothes that once occupied the seat now off piled on the ground. He props his feet on a small wooden stool with a cigarette between his fingers.

“Go to sleep, Lizzy.” He says with a look in his eye that makes me want to protest.

“You’renot the bossofme,” I say quietly though my eyes are begging to shut.

He drops his feet to the ground, resting his elbows against his thighs, and leaning closer to me. Smoke billows out through his nostrils, his eyebrows raised as if saying ‘try me’, daring me.

I roll my eyes as best I can before flipping onto my side. The warmth from my bed practically felt like a drug, making me want to lose myself to the numbness of sleep. The appeal of a dreamless slumber makes me want to sleep even more.

My eyes flutter closed as I hear rustled movement behind me, Chopin’s piano playing quietly, lulling me to sleep. My grip on reality fades as the room begins to rock; I feel a warm blanket cover me before I completely lose myself to my subconscious, begging for a dreamless sleep. 

Chapter Text

I wake up to the sound of talking in the hallway. My eyes protest to open as I roll over on my back, my mouth insufferably dry.

Sitting up, I immediately regret it. My stomach gurgles and threatens to-

I roll out of bed landing on my hands and knees and reach for my small metal trashcan, surrendering to the upheaval of my stomach contents.

Shit.

I push the trashcan away and fall back on the floor not wanting to move for a few more hours. I close my eyes and let myself drift back off to sleep.

—

Knocking raps on my door, startling me out of my nightmare. My body is covered in sweat and my mouth feels like it’s filled with cotton, which doesn’t help the intrusive headache that’s pounding away at my skull.

The knocking sounds again.

I look around, I’m still balled up on the floor in last night’s clothes - my shirt still unbuttoned - but I did at least pull my blanket down to drape over me. My room is bright and golden, but not from the midday sun, from the setting sun. I slept through the whole day…

More knocking.

I grunt as I push myself up using my bed for support. My body feels like it’s made of lead but I push myself towards the door and open it a crack, not wanting to willingly subject just anyone to my startling appearance.

“Hey,” Richard says from the other side with a small smile.

I open the door all the way and let him come in, I notice a bottle of water in one hand and a brown sack in the other.

I’m immediately self-conscious about the smell of my room thanks to the vomit now sitting in the bottom of my trashcan.

Richard sits down at my desk as I walk over to my window and open it a crack. The cold air invades my room but hopefully, it will alleviate the smell.

“I brought you this,” he says handing me the water bottle, which I take and drink half of in one go. “And this,” next is the sack with, upon inspection, holds a triangle sandwich and an apple inside. The sudden movement and water hitting my stomach makes me feel rather nauseous.

“Thank you,” I say in a hoarse voice, plopping down on my bed. My head is pounding and my body feels like it might just stop working. I feel stale and gross from sweating out all the alcohol during my last round of sleep.

“And this,” he says handing me two pills. “For the headache, you drank a lot.”

“How bad do I look, be honest?” I ask with a hint of a smile as I toss the pills to the back of my throat and swallow. I open the triangle sandwich and take a bite - turkey.

“You look great,” he says smiling, even laughing a little.

“Liar,” I chuckle as I take another bite of the sandwich. God, it’s heavenly.

“I haven’t seen you all day and figured you just took the day off.”

“I didn’t mean to, I guess my body just really needed some sleep.” I finish one of the triangles and I reach for the other. Eating this quickly is not helping the nausea fade, but I can’t help myself.

“Was it good sleep or…” he trails off and I know he means to ask if I have nightmares too. I know that he too loses sleep because of what he’s seen.

“After I got back, I think I was sleeping too hard to dream. But I woke up and…” I look over at the trashcan, Richard following my eyes, “and when I went back to sleep I…it wasn’t restful really.” The sandwich, with only one bite left, turns sour in my stomach. I throw the last piece in the bag after grabbing the apple.

Richard’s eyes stay locked on me, I eventually look up to meet them. I feel like there are a lot of secrets in his eyes. Things that he wishes he could tell others but can’t due to some sworn secrecy. Sworn secrecy between others or sworn secrecy with himself? I don’t know.

I look down and roll the apple in my hands.

“If you ever need to talk to someone,” he finally says.

“Thanks,” I say shortly before he says something like ‘I’m always here’ or ‘I’ll always listen’.

He gets up and takes a few steps toward the door. “Did…did Henry get you back alright?” He turns around.

Oh. I forgot about Henry. I look over to my turn table but no record sits atop it anymore. I look back at the chair Richard was just in, the one Henry sat in last night. “Yeah, made sure I got back safely.” I smile and look back at him. I don’t see any of the cold gaze that I see with Henry. It’s just Richard’s eyes, calm and comforting.

Richard smiles and opens the door. Without another word, he walks out, shutting the door quietly.

The sun has already set, the soft golden light fading to an evening blue. I sit on my bed and look at the worn oak floors, the metal trashcan currently holding my stomach contents, and then the window.

I feel rested. I don’t feel the usual remnants of my nightmares that weigh my body down like weights tied to my ankles dragging me further and further from the surface. I just feel the lingering dehydration from the night before. Nothing else. Which, in itself, should be worrisome, but it’s the first time that I’m not physically suffering because of it.

Was it the alcohol? Whatever pill I took?

I think dangerously, that I want it again. Whatever made me forget, whatever made me lose the iron chains weighing me down. I want that feeling again.

I sit there and stare at the window, before standing up and grabbing my shoes and my coat off the floor. I walk out of my room while I button my shirt and eventually into the cold outside. The liquor store is just a five-minute walk from here so I don’t even bother with my car.

The air freezes my breath in my chest and whips against my cheeks mercilessly. The snow has stopped falling and I walk under a newly night sky, solemn in my own company. After the quick walk, I spot the yellow neon sign displaying the 24-hour liquor store on the corner.

I walk in and breathe into my hands, warming the numbing sensation away. The old man behind the counter looks up from the newspaper and offers me a smile before going back to his reading.

As I peruse through the different options, I hear the bell chime and someone walks in. I look up in time to see Henry’s large body step inside away from the cold. My hand freezes on a bottle of gin - which I’ve decided to be my favorite liquor now - as he nods to the salesman and looks right at me.

He walks over and says, “hello Lizzy, you look well.”

“Are you following me?” I ask as my cheeks redden at the snippets of last night that I remember. They redden even more when I look down at the clothes I should have changed out of before leaving my room.

He chuckles deeply and mainly to himself before saying, “do you want me to be?”

“What?” I say before I could stop myself. “No, of course not.” I turn back to the bottle of gin and pull it off the shelf not even noting the type or price.

“Where are you taking that?” He asks, motioning with his chin to the bottle now cradled in my arms.

“To my room,” I say quietly as I walk past him, heading for the counter to pay.

I’m about to hand the man my money when two bottles - both expensive-looking whiskey - are set down next to mine, “and these.”

The old man rings us up together and Henry opens his wallet, handing the man cash. After bagging our bottles up, Henry motions for me to walk ahead.

Once outside I say, “you didn’t have to do that.”

He waves me off as he lights a cigarette and blows smoke out of his nose. “A ‘thank you’ would suffice.”

“Thanks,” I say quietly as I turn to walk back to my room and my warm bed waiting for me.

“Are you drinking by yourself?” He asks before I can even make it a few steps.

I turn around, “maybe, maybe not.”

He laughs again, releasing his inhale of smoke. “Get in,” he says motioning to his little white car a few feet away.

He must see the hesitation on my face because he adds, “I’m not going to kill you if that’s what you’re thinking.” My eyes widen and I look around the deserted road and snow-swept sidewalks. “Get in,” he repeats.

I concede as he opens the car door for me and I crouch inside, settling into the seat as he walks around to his side and gets in. I never noticed the slight limp in his step before.

He starts the car and the radio comes on softly, a song that I don’t know fills the silence. He pulls out of the parking lot and drives in the opposite direction of the campus. I open my mouth to ask him where we’re going, but I decide against it, so I just sit and wait. He seems to notice my internal conundrum because I see a smile tug at the corner of his mouth.

After a mostly silent car ride, we pull into the driveway of what I assume is his house. From what I can see, it isn’t far from where I expected Henry to live. He turns the car off and gets out, I reach for the handle and swing the door open, stretching my legs out. The cold rushes to greet me as I stand, I close the door behind me and follow him to the front door.

When we get inside, Henry removes the bottle from my hands and takes both his and mine into the kitchen. He comes back and shrugs his coat off, hanging it on a coat rack by the door, I follow suit.

I take my time looking around as he retreats back to the kitchen. I hear the clinking of glass as I notice the various different kerosene lamps on just about any flat surface. It gives an antique, ghost-like feeling to the house, it’s oddly comforting despite who it belongs to.

“Would you mind if I use your bathroom?” I call towards him from the entryway.

“Down the hall to your left.” He calls back.

I make my way towards the bathroom and when I get inside, I lock the door. God, what’s wrong with me? This is the man that killed Bunny, and I let him take me home. How stupid could I be?

I start to feel myself panic but as I flip on the light in the bathroom, I recognize another feeling too. A feeling I don’t want to examine or dive into. Maybe I can call it a thrill, a thrill that I’m in Henry Winter’s house. Houses hold a lot of secrets and can tell a lot about a person. Maybe I can figure out who Henry is? What makes him tick.

If I wasn’t apprehensive before, I most certainly am now as I look at myself in the mirror. Bags under my eyes, my hair is severely disheveled. My mascara is smeared under my eyes, my clothes are wrinkled and rumpled. I look horrific. Not to mention, my breath tastes horrid and I feel like I haven’t showered in weeks.

I run the water and splash my face, rubbing away at the makeup from yesterday, rubbing away the grogginess. I dry my face on a hand towel by the sink and rinse my mouth out a couple of times before straightening and smoothing my hair as well as my clothes, and walking out back to Henry.

I walk into the living room and see him sitting in a worn-looking leather chair with a glass of whiskey on the side table and a book lying on his lap. He’s so focused and inthralled with his book that I don’t think he knows I’m even here.

I take a step and the floor boards creak underneath me. He looks up, his eyes examine me from head to toe, “no need to freshen yourself up for me,” He says plainly.

“Oh I…” I don’t exactly know what to say to this, i'm a little embarressed that he noticed. I walk over to the couch adjacent to the chair he occupies and say, “a habit I suppose.” I sit on the soft, old sofa and try to look as naturally relaxed as possible.

“A habit?” He asks, looking at me over the rim of his glasses.

“Yes, a habit to always look presentable in front of people, no matter who they are.” I don’t know why I’m telling him this.

He looks at me for a second in silence before saying, “I poured you a glass of gin, it’s in the kitchen.”

Oh right, my gin. I almost forgot.

I go retrieve my glass and sit back down on the sofa. I watch him read intently as he occasionally sips from his glass. I caugh a glipse at the spine but it's in a language I've never even seen before. I want to ask him why I’m here, why he bothered to bring me back to his house, but I don’t want to break the silence that’s settled over the room.

We remain like this for a while, both of us sipping, him reading and me watching. Finally, I think he knows I’ve been watching him because he looks over at me and examines me for a minute before going back to his book. Again, I entertain the thought of asking him why I’m here, but my thought is cut short when the phone rings.

I look over at the old rotary phone sitting on a small table as it continues to ring loudly. Then, looking back at Henry, I notice that he doesn’t even seem to hear it.

“You are going to answer that?” I ask.

“Hmm?” He tears his eyes from the page and looks at me.

“The phone?”

“Oh, no.” He shakes his head and goes back to his book. Within a matter of seconds, he’s immersed himself, wholeheartedly, back into his reading. He looks down at the pages with a pinched brow and his hand tracing the line of his jaw when he doesn’t have his drink in it.

I sip at my gin casually, the burn fairly comforting, as I watch Henry read, his expression of narrowed eyes and a skeptical brow intrigues me. Is this what he does when he’s home in the evenings? He just reads in silence with a glass of whiskey at his side?

I suppose I don’t have any idea what the alternative would be. I’m not surprised by the lack of a television in his home. He also doesn’t seem to use any of the lights, only the kerosene lamps around the room. I must admit, it give the room a soft, warm glow that’s terribly inviting. It makes me want to lounge in here all day, the curtains shut, book in hand, maybe a cigarette or two.

But I try to disband that thought immediately. The thought that I would like to spend my evenings here, in Henry’s home. So, I go back to watching Henry read, watching his eyes scan the page at a rather impressive speed. I watch his chest rise and fall with every breath he takes, occasionally remembering my drink in my hand.

“If you have something to say, then say it,” he says mumbling as he reads, not even bothering to look up at me.

I wasn’t aware he even knew I was here with how intently he was reading. I decide to say nothing and act like I didn’t hear him.

He finally looks up with a single raised brow, repeating himself with just a look.

“Why did you bring me here?” I ask around a sip of gin, my glass almost empty already.

He purses his lips as he looks at me. “You were going to drink alone. I was going to drink alone. Might as well drink alone in each other’s company.”

“That’s very kind of you but-”

“But I’m miserably unpleasant and you would prefer to drink alone in your room?” He interrupts.

I do, rather, unfortunately, remember slurring those words in his face at the party last night. “Sorry about that,” I say quietly, looking down at my hands.

“I suppose you’re not wrong,” he closes the book with his forefinger holding the place as he takes another drink of his whiskey, “I am relatively unpleasant at times.”

I don’t say anything as I take another drink. His eyes remain on mine.

“You probably think I’m some psychotic monster who killed my friend,” he continues.

Everything I was trying to avoid, every thought I was trying to outrun slams into me. Every nightmare returns to the forefront of my mind. I finish off the rest of my gin as if to chase it away.

“I wish I could explain everything to you - explain why. Maybe you wouldn’t look at me like you’re scared and on edge all the time.”

“How am I supposed to look at you?” I say bravely, though my voice is still a timid sound.

“I can’t say that I expect you to look at me like a human, not after what you saw. But, I think that could make me feel better.” His eyes soften. The blue is still deep, but less icy coldness and more like a rushing river in spring. Thawing out, showing the signs of promised warmth but still freezing to the touch.

“Make you feel better?” I suppose I never thought about what Henry would be going through after killing his friend. The inner turmoil that he faces every day and every night. Does he have nightmares of that day? Or does it not haunt him like it does me? Like it does Richard.

“Every time I see you,” he closes his book and sets it down on the table, “I’m reminded of that day. Not that I particularly have gone out of my way to forget it, but I would like to not think about it as often as I do.” He finishes his drink, his face stoic and serious.

When I don’t respond immediately, he gets up and walks to the kitchen. Instead of taking his glass with him, he brings out his bottle of whiskey and my bottle of gin. He pours more into my glass before setting it on the floor next to my feet and filling his own.

He sits down on the other end of the couch and runs a hand through his hair. I notice the scar above his right eye and I can’t help but stare at it. Either deigning to ignore my stare or just not noticing, he says, “but how could I expect you to understand the severity of everything we’ve done.”

The severity of everything we’ve done. What does he mean by ‘everything’? I take a couple of gulps of gin, the burn that tracks down my throat and into my stomach seems less apparent now. A warm tingle fills my legs that I gladly welcome.

Henry cocks his head to the side and studies me for what feels like an eternity. Feeling like some zoo animal, I finish off my gin and look away. My head starts to spin but I don’t mind, especially since this is the feeling I was desperately chasing.

“You might want to slow down,” he says taking a sip from his glass. He pulls out a cigarette and lights it between his fingers, puffing smoke into the air. “Want one?” He extends his own to me.

“I don’t smoke,” I say plainly. I reach for the bottle of gin on the floor and exchange its place with my glass, bringing the bottle into my lap.

Henry leans his head against the back of the couch as he blows a smoke ring into the air. I watch as the ring grows and grows before fading out close to the ceiling. I swig from my bottle as I examine the hard set of his jaw, the column of his neck, down to the collar of his black, knit sweater.

It must be the gin, but I notice the features that make him attractive. Not attractive in the conventional way, but more so in an academic, classic-born-in-the-wrong-century kind of way. He could fit in any period, his face is timeless. He’s tall and strong, someone who could protect what he held most dearly. Maybe that’s what happened, maybe that’s why he killed Bunny. To protect something dear to him.

I notice I’m staring and I feel my cheeks redden as I look down at the bottle in my lap. I take another swig, bathing in the feeling of numbness that’s setting in.

Henry finishes his glass and sets it on the ground, filling it once again, before bringing it to his lips for another taste. I watch his mouth as it meets the glass, I examine the way his throat moves when he swallows. He’s terrifyingly beautiful, and that scares me. Thrills me.

He looks up and meets my eye, my cheeks feel incredibly hot. I turn my head and examine the lamp to my left.

I feel the couch shift and I say, “why do you have so many of those lamps?” I try to ignore how close his body is now. I try to ignore the feeling of the gin bottle leaving my lap.

“The electric lights give me headaches.” His breath is so close it tickles my ear. His large hand, so painfully gentle, pushes the hair from my neck letting his fingers comb down my back. The gin makes my head buzz but his breath on my skin makes me want to lose all sense of self-control.

“Henry,” I whisper as his lips brush the nape of my neck. My eyes flutter closed and my head tilts to the side granting him more access.

His lips press gently to my neck and I let out a shaky breath. His hand that was once idly running through my hair now cups the other side of my jaw as his slow kisses litter my neck. I raise a hand and rest it on the back of his head, arching my back into him.

What the hell am I doing?

I suck in a sharp breath and pull back from him.

Oh my god, what the hell am I doing? This man is a murder. He killed someone and he haunts my dreams every night and after a couple glasses of gin, I let him get close enough to kiss me. To kiss my neck and run his hands over my body.

I’m not sure what look my face shows, but I feel myself shaking. I feel him slide away from me on the couch, the air where he was is now cold.

“I-I think I should leave.” I say without meeting his eye, standing and taking a few more swigs from the bottle, wincing as the gin pours down my throat before setting it back down on the ground.

I chance looking at him for a moment, his eyes are back to their usual icy coldness, a new cigarette is between his lips and he just watches me as he stretches out on the couch. Completely unaffected by what just happened, he watches me walk out of the room and put my coat on, leaving his house.

I breathe in the calming chill of the air and walk down the steps of his porch and into the night.

I don’t know how far campus is from here, I don’t even know exactly where I am but I can just find the nearest payphone and call a taxi.

My walk down a main road to find a phone goes by too quickly. My mind racing of thoughts of Henry’s mouth pressed to my neck. How good it felt. How much I wanted to give in and let him kiss me more. How badly I wanted him to continue. How my heart pounds in my chest and my cheeks flush with the thought of it.

It’s the gin. It has to be the gin. That’s the only explanation as to why I would let him get that close to me in the first place.

I shake my slightly dizzy head as I step into the phone booth and call a taxi. I make myself forget everything that happened tonight before I let my thoughts obsess over something it shouldn’t. The gin making my head buzz as the taxi driver tries to make idle chit-chat. I try my best, he really was nice, but after so much, I just remain silent, all the way back to campus.

Chapter Text

Going back to class and trying on my assignments again means that the professors stay out of my personal life like I wished they did from the beginning. It was hard enough dealing with everything I saw, and though I wouldn't say I've fully dealt with any of those problems, it made it much worse when they would show concern for me. Asking if everything was okay, asking if I needed any help. It made me feel angry for some reason. Almost as if they actually cared about me and wanted to hear why I hadn't completed the last seven assignments and why my A took a deep dive into a low C. However, lately, I feel I’ve been as close as I can back to my old self in terms of academia.

Of course, as close as I can feel with the same nightmare replaying night after night, however, some yield different outcomes in equally as terrifying details. The feeling that someone is watching me at all times, even in the comfort of my own room. The desire to avoid Charles, Camilla, Francis, and…Henry.

Oh god, that’s what has been eating me alive, making it near impossible to return to normalcy…the fear that I will run into Henry and think of him kissing my neck…or killing Bunny. The feelings I’ve tried so desperately hard to force deep down into a little lockbox deep inside of me to keep from spewing out. The feelings I don’t particularly wish to dissect because I’m scared of the results it would yield.

Though, despite my efforts to be invisible to the entire Greek department, I’ve rather enjoyed the company of Richard. We’re together almost every evening so long as he doesn’t have prior engagements with said Greek department. He’s the one who has helped me return back to my old self. My old self but with all the emotional baggage.

Unfortunately though, raising my grades has proven to be a much more difficult task than letting them slip like I have.

I feel myself reverting back into the dregs of my terrified state of mind when I try to finish the reading assignment given to my class a day or two ago. Tasked with reading and dissecting A Clockwork Orange has proven to be much more difficult than I initially thought it to be.

The crazy language used, the sinister themes, and the moral questions and concepts make it hard to put down but also hard to read. I stare at the book, the garish pink cover staring right back. I want to keep up with this revived sense of self that I've found, but this book is making it anything but easy. However, I was rather happy that Crime and Punishment didn’t get chosen for this semester’s reading assignments. Although it’s a favorite, I suppose it’s a little too close to real events, thoughts, and themes that I would rather avoid completely despite my love for Dostoevsky and Raskolnikov.

I pull the small, second-hand tea kettle off of the radiator in my room and pour the warm water into my mug, steeping an earthy tea to bring me comfort on this cold cloudy late afternoon. The sun is lowering and threatening to sink below the horizon when I hear a knock on my door.

I suppose that’ll be Richard.

I slide off my bed and walk over, opening the door to Richard with his bag slung over one shoulder.

“Hey,” he says with a small smile on his lips.

“Just in time,” I say swinging the door open and walking back into my room, knowing he would follow, “I was just getting bullied by my reading assignment.”

He chuckles and says, “I’m sorry to hear that," a pause, "Would you want to go to the library though? I need to check out a few books for this assignment that’s due tomorrow.”

“Alright,” I say, though I don’t particularly want to leave my freshly stepping mug of tea, but I pack my book bag nonetheless. I put my coat on and throw in A Clockwork Orange, my notebook, and a pencil into my book bag and sling it over my shoulder. “After you,” I say to Richard, flicking the lights off as we leave.

It feels good to be friends with Richard. I’ve been smiling more, and so has he. I don’t want to assume it’s because of me, but I think he's been grateful for our closeness this last week. I’ve unintentionally tethered myself to him because he’s offered me a breath of fresh air, a reprieve from the suffocating life I let myself fall into.

I never realized that acting normal, acting like nothing happened, and putting on a fake smile can often feel real if you lie to yourself enough times. The absence of Henry from my thoughts, excluding the dreams, has been relieving, to say the least.

We walk out of the building and head across campus to the library, snow has begun falling again after a few days of sunny skies. The flakes are fat and heavy, and the sound of the snow hitting the ground is a soft, calming acquaintance on our walk, along with the crisp smell that distinguishly belongs to winter. The crunch of our feet fills the comfortable silence until we get to the library.

The heaters are on full blast, forcing me to remove my coat the minute we walk in. The crowd in the library is sparse, most people deciding to weather the winter from their own rooms. Finding an empty table is easy work for Richard and I.

We sit down by a large window, in an area alone, and I begin to remove the contents of my bag onto the table. Richard mentions finding some books about Greek, and I dive into my assignment.

I was right in not wanting to read this right now. I hold the book open, flat on the table, I open my notebook and grab my pencil. As I read, one quote is all I write, the scratch of pencil on paper filling the air around me.

After writing it, I read it aloud to myself softly, almost softer than a whisper.

“Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?”

“What’d you say?” Richard asks, startling me as he sets the books he checked out on the table. The covers are old and worn, and the smell of old books fills the space between us. A cheap cup of coffee sits next to the books, steaming in a white styrofoam cup.

“Oh, just a quote from the book,” I say pointing to the book in front of me with the back end of my pencil.

Richard nods and sits across from me, grabbing his pen and opening the first book.

Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?

I let my thoughts spiral for a moment, feeling myself on the brink of some prolific thought when all I can think about is…Henry.

I physically shake my head, shaking him from my mind as I continue reading, my hands toying with the pencil as I soak in the words, not writing a single thing down in addition to my first quote.

I heave out a sigh when I reach the end of a page, tired of the book already because against my most ardent wishes, it brings back the thoughts I desperately avoid. Realistically, I could do this assignment without reading this book again; my memory would be good enough to recall most of the book from high school. I don’t know why I insist on tormenting myself.

“Everything alright?” I hear Richard's voice from in front of me in a soft tone. His finger is stopped on some letter in the Greek alphabet, and his eyes are lifted and looking at me though his head remains slightly tilted towards the book.

If I must admit, Richard is a fair-looking man. Though I’ve thought this before, I find myself drawn in by the way his hair is disheveled as if he just ran a hand through it. The small smudge of ink he has on the underside of his jaw, the softness in his eyes as he looks at me.

“Uh, yeah, just kind of tired of this bo-”

“Oh, Richard!” I hear a voice far too loud for an appropriate volume in a library come from behind me. I turn and see Francis’s slender face as he brings his hands up and cups them around his mouth, breathing warm air into them. And next to him…

I turn around in my seat the minute Henry’s eyes find mine.

Oh god, please no, not right now.

“Hello Richard, Lizzy.” Henry’s voice sounds from right next to me. I watch Francis pull the seat next to Richard back and plop down into it. The chair next to me moves back and Henry’s large frame sits down, crossing one leg over the other, his ankle resting atop his knee.

“Oh hey,” Richard says with a hint of a smile. “What are the two of you up to?”

“Well, I called Henry because I was suffering from a terrible migraine and thought it surely was an aneurysm. I called Henry in a panic and asked him to take me to the hospital, but he refused.” Francis says from the chair, sticking a cigarette between his lips and lighting it swiftly.

I’m fairly certain the library has a strict no-smoking policy, but I don’t voice anything on the matter, I’m all too conscious of Henry sitting mere inches away from me. My first time seeing him since his lips were on my neck and…

Oh god, I need to stop thinking about that. I close my eyes and rub them, hoping to wipe the image away.

“So, have you two been to the hospital?” Richard asks wearily. Richard has mentioned that Francis is a bit of a hypochondriac but asked me not to say anything; apparently, he’s touchy about it.

“No, Henry suggested a stroll around campus. Said something about good crisp air helps clear the brain.” He pauses to take a drag of his cigarette, the air being clouded with the smell of smoke. “We were actually looking for you, Richard. You weren't in your room so we walked around a bit more and saw you two through the window.” He says, tapping the ashes onto the floor and running his shoe over them, grinding them into the carpet.

“For me? Why?” Richard asks looking between Henry and Francis.

“Just looking for company so Francis here would stop thinking about his head,” Henry says. He removes his glasses and uses the bottom of his sweater to clean the lenses before putting them back on his face.

“And it’s a good thing we found you, my migraine is coming back and I need the distraction,” Francis says, sucking on his cigarette once again.

“You know Francis, smoking in the library is-”

Francis waves him off and looks down at the half-empty cup of coffee that sits near Richard. “Oh, is this yours? Do you mind if I have a sip?” He asks Richard to which he tells Francis to just take it. He takes a few sips, grimaces, and puts the butt of his cigarette into the coffee with a satisfying sizzle as the flame extinguishes.

We sit in silence for a moment before Henry says, “We’re going to have dinner at my place this weekend. You both are invited.”

My head snaps up; I turn and look at Henry who turns and looks down at me. I’m trying to find any excuse I can to say that I can’t go. I couldn’t imagine being in a room again with him, let alone all of the Greek students, I’d assume.

“Sure,” Richard says, then looks across the table at me, waiting for my answer.

I look down, clear my throat and say, “Sure.” Oh god, why did I have to say that?

“Great. Francis, you’ll be kind enough to come get them, right?”

“Oh sure, I wouldn’t mind,” Francis says.

“Are Charles and Camilla going to be there?” Richard asks.

“Yes, they were going to host, but they said something about the apartment being a mess and asked if I could host instead,” Henry says rather matter-of-factly.

“Which you know how the twins are with this sort of thing,” Francis says. Although I don’t know what the twins are like with this sort of thing, I nod along anyway.

Henry turns and looks down at the book I’m reading. Without asking, he flips the book shut, keeping his finger on the page I’m on, and reads the cover.

“I can’t say I’m an Anthony Burgess fan.” He says, and even though he says it loud enough for the whole table, it still feels like he said it only between the both of us.

“I can’t say I’m particularly enjoying this book right now,” I say with a slight amount of bite though I’m not sure why. I wouldn't call the emotion stirring in my gut anger, but that's how it came out.

“The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.” Henry recites from the book as if he read the sentence with his own eyes.

“I thought you weren’t a fan,” I say in response to his perfect quotation of my favorite line of the book.

“Just because I’m not a fan doesn’t mean I didn’t read it.”

For some reason, I have a hard time picturing Henry reading this book. With its disturbing cover, the awful slang and writing style, all of it. In its entirety, it feels very much un-Henry-like. Richard and Francis engage in their own conversations about whatever is in the book Richard has on the table; they don’t bother to interject in Henry and I’s conversation.

“I much prefer Dostoevsky.” He says, slouching a little in his chair, spreading his legs out underneath the table.

“I’m not surprised by that.”

“But if I’m to read Russian literature, it’s much better to read it in its intended text. I suggest doing the same.” He says scratching his chin as if in thought, looking up at a spot above Francis’s head.

“Are you suggesting I learn to read fluent Russian so that I might read a Dostoevsky work in its original text?” I ask annoyed at how casual he is with his pretentious comment to simply learn Russian.

“In it’s intended and original text.” He corrects. “He did not write it with the intention of it being read in English, did he?”

“Oh, and I suppose you asked him what he was planning to do with his works in the nineteenth century?”

To my surprise, he lets out a soft laugh through his nose. “Despite what people said about him being rude, arrogant, and vain, deep down he was actually rather good company.”

I’m so caught off guard by this side of Henry, joking about a famous literary genius, that I can’t even think of a reply besides, “Well, give him my regards if you ever see him again.”

“Oh, that I will.”

There’s a beat of silence between us while Francis and Richard talk in Greek to each other before Henry says, “Francis, we should let them get back to their work. Besides, your migraine is gone, isn’t it?”

Francis turns and looks at Henry, “You know, it really is. Richard, it’s been a pleasure talking with you as always. Lizzy, it was nice seeing you as well,” Francis kindly says to me.

“You too,” I reply with a smile.

Henry stands up, pushing his chair in as he readjusts his black coat around his shoulders and neck before looking down at me. For some reason, the way he looks at me makes me ignore everything we talked about and imagine sitting in his living room. The sting of gin still fresh in my throat, his glasses slipping from the bridge of his nose while he reads a book in a language I’ve never seen. The warm glow from the lanterns around us, and I’m all but drawn into the cozy couch. Somehow, with one look, he’s reminding me of everything we shared that night; though it doesn’t feel like much, it also felt like a piece of myself. An intimate piece of myself.

“I look forward to seeing you all this weekend,” Henry says before turning and walking out, Francis right next to him.

I feel my cheeks heat, and I pray to anything that they aren’t as red as they feel.

If they are, Richard is kind enough not to say anything, which I’m grateful for. We only work for a little while longer, I read more of A Clockwork Orange while Richard dives into his Greek text.

After a while, the library begins to shut down; not even realizing we missed dinner in the dining hall, we walk back to our rooms, Richard dropping me off at mine first.

I decide to voice a thought that has been churning since the library to Richard, “I don’t want to impose on your dinner this weekend.” Richard alluded to it being a tradition amongst the Greek group before Bunny…died. Maybe the others are also gripping onto any sense of normalcy they can, trying to forget the horrors they’ve made for themselves.

“You won’t be imposing,” he says. “Besides, Camilla is interested in meeting you. Another girl in the group, or something like that.”

“I doubt she said that,” I give Richard a chastising look.

“Lizzy,” his hand gently grabs my elbow in reassurance. “You won’t be an imposition, trust me.”

His hand offers me a small warmth that makes me almost crave more. The soft look in his eyes melts into my mind, like a warm sun on an uncharacteristically warm day in the spring. A day where people go out and lay on the lawn in any beam of light they can find. The warm feeling that spreads throughout your skin, prompting you to fall asleep in it’s sense of security.

I’ve never had that feeling that intensely with Richard before.

“Alright,” I find myself saying when I realize I’ve been staring longer than what would be normal.

Richard’s eyes are locked on mine almost like we were sharing the same thought for a moment. I almost find myself asking him to stay with me, asking him to share my terribly small bed. He has stayed with me once. We were together late into the night, we got to talking and we just fell asleep.

I woke up with his arm draped over my waist, his chin resting on the top of my head, my back completely pressed to him. I had no nightmares that night.

How harmful would it be if I asked him to stay?

My mind wanders off to the feeling of Henry looking down at me in the library. He’s cold, calculating intellect, always knows the correct thing to say, perfect to a fault in the eyes of those he keeps at arm's distance. Richard is the warm, Californian sun. He might not always say the right thing, but I feel comfort from his words and they were the reason I pulled myself out of the hole I dug.

The words are on the tip of my tongue, to ask him to stay, just a whisper of a word that could make him come into my room. I’m ready to speak them when my mouth opens, prepared to say them. But all I say is, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Richard lowers his eyes and gives a soft, such a soft smile. “See you tomorrow Liz.”

He releases my elbow I didn’t know he was still holding, the spot cold from the absence of his warmth. I watch him turn to leave and walk down the hall to his own door. I step back into my dark room and close the door before he has the chance to turn around and look back at me.

I heave a sigh into the darkness and let my head fall into my hands.

I’m just lonely and feel this desire and admiration for someone who offered me help when I didn’t want it. This person that made me smile and joke again. And maybe I’ve been that for him too. But that changes nothing. I can’t trust any of them enough to let them in to the degree, though I desperately wish I could. I’d let Richard in, just to feel that warmth all the time.

But do I want it all the time? Heat can feel suffocating, stifling, and burning, making it hard to breathe.

It’s the cold that I always find myself drawn to. The chill of the winter air, the promise of the freezing winter as autumn is pushed through to make way for the iciness of snow and dark nights. The freshness of the air, the stinging in my lungs that has always given me focus, and calmness. The cold that clears my head when I can't do it myself.

I wish more now than I ever have, that I wouldn't have walked on the hiking trails that day. That I would have stayed at the party and not been privy to all of this...this...confusion and dread and suffering.

Chapter Text

I always get ready way too early when I’m nervous about an event, and I’m nothing if not nervous right now. Dinner at Henry’s with all of the Greek Students. God, why would I agree to this?

I can only imagine how the night will go. I’ll show up, Richard or Francis will try to stir up conversation only succeeding in making it awkward. Henry won’t deign to speak and Charles and Camilla will join in, trying to be polite.

I’m not even sure what they eat. Probably some ancient Greek literature to absorb as much information as possible so that they might learn it all faster.

I let a laugh pass through my nose in a single blow of air.

I drop onto my bed, my anxiety balling in the pit of my stomach like a stone. Henry will be there. Of course, he’ll be there…it’s at his place. The last time I was there…his lips…oh God, his lips were on my neck, and I…I wanted them to stay there. But I didn’t. I didn’t entertain the thought and I’ve tried very hard not to since it happened, but sometimes in the lonely, sleepless nights, that memory stirs back to life.

I put my hands over my face and take a deep breath. In through my nose, out through my mouth but the out goes too quickly, more of an exasperated sigh.

Richard and Francis should be here at any moment, though it’s still a little early. I lean over towards my nightstand grabbing the cold mug of tea I steeped earlier today, taking a sip and placing it back down on the nightstand.

I’m going to be in a room with all of them. The last time I was with all of them at once was…was when I watched Henry push Bunny off the side of the cliff into the reservoir below. Do they know how much that memory haunts me? I wonder how much it haunts them.

My thoughts get swept aside by a knock on the door. Assuming it’s Richard, I say, “Come in.”

My thoughts are correct, Richard’s head peaks in through a crack in the door before opening up fully while I stand from my bed. “Hey, you ready?”

“Yeah, let me grab my coat.” I reach for it hanging on the corner of my armoire door. “Hi Francis,” I say around Richard.

“Hi Lizzy, how are you?” He asks politely as he puffs out smoke from his cigarette.

“Hungry,” I lie as I adjust my coat around my shoulders. “Let’s go.” I smile and follow Richard and Francis out of my room, shutting off the light as I go. Closing the door behind me, we make our way down the hall and out of the building, into the cold night air. It’s not snowing, but there’s fresh powder on the ground ready to be shoveled in the morning.

The car ride is pleasant enough. Francis is kind to include me in any conversations he and Richard have in the front seat, but catches on that I’m not really in the mood to talk. Every mile we get closer to Henry’s, the more nervous I become. The ball of anxiety in my gut turning into downright dread.

When we pull in, Francis shuts the car off and we all get out. Crunching our way through the snow, we make it to the front door. Francis doesn’t even bother to knock before turning the knob and walking inside, banging his shoes on the door frame, knocking off the snow before walking in.

If I wanted to avoid the memories from the last time I was here, this is not helping. The entryway alone brings them back.

“Hello Henry, we’ve made it,” Francis calls through the house as he sets a bottle of brown liquor down on the table in the entryway that I didn’t even see him carry in. He shrugs his coat off and Richard and I mimic his actions. We’re hanging the coats in the small closet by the door when Henry comes from the kitchen.

“Oh hello, Charles and Camilla are already here and drinking me dry.” He has a dish towel thrown over his shoulder. The sleeves of his dark navy, expensive-looking button-up, are rolled up above his elbows and his hair is messy but still kept. I have to force my eyes away from him, away from how…domestic…he looks. I didn’t think that was going to be the first challenge of the night.

This is going to be a long evening…

We make our way into the kitchen, Charles and Camilla are indeed in here already with a drink in their hands.

“You finally made it,” Charles calls from the other side of the kitchen. It’s weird, seeing them all at once again. They all seem so close with one another, though that would make sense with what they’ve done together. It doesn’t feel awkward between them but there is a hint of…weariness…in the few, small moments between conversations. It’s almost like they also can’t believe they’ve done what they did.

“Lizzy, it’s good to see you again,” Charles says with a smile. He is rather pleasant like I remember from that party, from what I can remember, that is.

“It’s good to see you, thank you all for letting me come, I told Richard that I didn’t want to impose, but he insisted on me coming anyway.” I offer a smile and a small laugh.

“Oh, it’s no imposition, the more the merrier!” I think Charles is already tipsy.

“Dinner will be ready soon,” Henry says from the sink, taking the dish towel from his shoulder to wipe his hands before placing it back.

“What are we having? It smells divine.” Francis says sniffing the air. It does indeed smell delicious, so delicious that my stomach immediately grumbles.

“Well, I was going to do a roast but the market only had chickens, not a roast to be seen. So, we’re having roast chicken with vegetables in a wine sauce I saw the recipe for when the cooking channel was on the other day.

“With pineapple upside-down cake for dessert,” Camilla says. She sidesteps to showcase the glazed-looking cake.

“You made that, Camilla?” Richard asks, “That looks amazing.”

The conversations keep flowing, sometimes even two separate conversations happening across the kitchen at once. I just stand and watch and try to chime in when asked a question or if I feel like I’ve been silent for too long.

Already I noticed that I might have been wrong before. This group is more inviting than I was giving them credit for. They try to include me in conversations and Richard is kind enough to quietly translate any Greek that’s spoken so that I understand. Henry hands me a glass with clear liquid in it, the smell of gin giving itself away immediately. It smells like a sterile doctor's office.

Camilla asks me questions and I find her rather easy to relate to. I was worried the most about her, not knowing what to expect from the only girl in a group of guys. All my initial thoughts about these people are gone and proven wrong simply by conversation alone. I find myself enjoying this time and forgetting what really brings us all together.

If it were just the others, it might be like every other day. But I don’t want to let myself forget why I’m here. They feel obligated to include me now that I had such terrible luck that day and saw something they don’t want me to talk about.

I get it though. Keep a close eye on me, be kind and friendly and make me trust them so that I turn to them when I’m unsure or scared and not someone else. It’s smart and logical and I’m almost certain it was all Henry’s idea. Which stings a little. It only makes me hurt a small amount when I think about his lips on my neck. I suppose he’s only getting close to me to build my trust and keep me close, to keep a watchful eye on me. If I step out of line, I might be the next to suffer a fatal mistake on my next hike.

I take a drink of my gin and try to focus my mind away from those thoughts, the burn helping with that, of course. I want to be in the middle of this, right now, in Henry’s kitchen. Listening to Charles and Francis talk about something that I don’t understand. Having Richard translate for me, Camilla and Henry talking to the side. So, I push those thoughts away for now. Not removing them completely, but pushing them back so that I can just enjoy a moment and take a fucking breath and step away from everything.

It’s easy to snap out of it as Henry pulls the roast chicken and vegetables from the oven, the smell encapsulating the kitchen and practically making us all drool on ourselves as Henry checks to make sure it’s properly cooked and done. Richard and Charles make their way to the small linoleum table in the corner, extra chairs pulled up to accommodate everyone.

I sit down next to Richard, Francis across from me. Charles sits on the other end of the table, and Camilla beside him. Henry carries the large pot over to the table and sets it down, steam lifting from the dish along with the mouth-watering smell of rosemary, garlic, onion, and other delightful spices.

Henry grabs his glass from the counter behind him and sits down in the chair at the head of the table, next to me. Charles volunteers to carve the chicken as the rest of us scoop up vegetables and put them on our plates, Charles putting pieces of chicken as he carves on our plates as well.

“Good God Henry, this amazing,” Francis says after he puts a bite of chicken in his mouth.

I use my fork and cut a small piece of potato, stab it, and bring it to my mouth. I have to physically refrain from outright moaning at the flavor. It’s so soft and buttery, a good counter to the savory, pungent red onions. The sweet carrots compliment the bitter Brussels sprouts, and the earthy flavor from the mushrooms and the wine sauce makes it all the more delightful.

If I thought the vegetables were good, then the chicken is nothing short of perfection. It’s juicy and spicy, but also sweet from the sauce. I want to roll my eyes as the flavor explodes across my tongue but when I look up, I catch Henry’s gaze out of the side of my eye and hold back.

“Well, what do you think?” He asks the question out loud, but like in the library, it feels like a private question between the two of us. The other side of the table is talking about the meal too, but they pay no attention to Henry’s question to me.

“It’s fine, I’m not a big fan of mushrooms though,” I say in a deadpan tone, teasing him a little as I take a swig of my gin. It still burns as it goes down but I’m growing to like that burn, to even crave that burn.

“I’ll leave them out next time, then.” He says back, both of us refusing to break the eye contact first. His piercing blue eyes stare at me through his glasses and I wouldn’t look away even if I could.

This happened the last time we were together in public. There’s this tension that fills the space between us and I find myself leaning into it. Enjoying our seemingly private conversations, ignoring anyone else in the room. I enjoy teasing him a little and for some reason, I’m always a little surprised when he teases back.

Despite my stubborn nature, I look down first and put another piece of chicken in my mouth. Heavenly would be a good word to describe this meal.

“So, Lizzy,” I hear Charles say from the other end of the table. “Richard says that you’re an aspiring writer.”

I look up from my plate and smile, “Yes, that’s right.”

“What do you like to write about?” He pops a carrot into his mouth waiting for my answer.

“Oh, whatever comes to mind. I’d like to publish a book one day, but for now, it’s more poetry and short stories and essays for class.” I take a sip of my gin, feeling a soft tingling sensation in my legs. The gin warms me up from the inside out, making me feel cozy.

“What’s your inspiration for such a goal?” Francis asks, setting his fork and knife down, wiping his mouth on a napkin in his lap.

My inspiration? I’m not even sure I know the answer to that question. “I’m not sure that I can pinpoint an exact inspiration. I suppose I just enjoy creating a story out of thin air, making a timeline, creating events, building a whole new world inside the pages of a book.”

“I never thought of it like that,” Charles says. “I used to read quite a lot as a kid, but now I don’t as much. Except for class, I suppose.”

“Unfortunately, me too,” I reply.

We enjoy the rest of the meal accompanied by idle chit-chat, drinking, and a little more drinking. By the time Camilla gets up to retrieve the pineapple upside-down cake, I’m toeing the line between tipsy and drunk. Though I know I’m not alone, Charles is talking far louder than necessary, Francis is slurring his words, and Richard is getting giggly and less reserved than normal.

Although, Henry has had as much to drink as we have, or so I think he has, he seems as cool and level-headed as he always is - which is mildly irritating.

We’re all laughing at Francis right now. He’s telling a story of when he went to Philadelphia and tried a philly cheesesteak for the first time but instead of saying it how it’s supposed to be pronounced, he kept accidentally saying “chilly pheesesteak” which would send us all into a fit of laughter. It’s to the point that I’m not even sure which way is the correct way anymore.

The cake is great too, sweet and moist, the pineapple full of flavor. Charles and Francis are talking about some book, occasionally going between Greek and English before Francis turns to Henry and asks, “Do you still have that book, Henry?”

“Yes, it’s in the living room on the bookshelf by the window, third shelf.” Of course, he would know the exact location. I couldn’t tell you where I left Clockwork Orange in my room and I just read it earlier today.

Charles and Francis get up and head into the living room, taking their glasses with them. Camilla says something to Richard that I don’t hear all that well and they end up getting up and going into the living room after Francis and Charles.

Henry gets up and walks the dishes in his hands to the sink, running water over them and coming back to grab more.

I feel bad that everyone got up and left their dishes so, despite my desire to not be alone with Henry, I stay and start stacking dirty dishes with dirty cutlery on top.

I walk over to the sink and set them beside him on the counter. His head turns and he looks down at me. I can’t help but freeze and look up into his eyes. His pupils are dilated from the alcohol, but the blue around the edges still is his signature blue. I wish I knew the proper name for that exact shade of blue…

“Thanks,” he says, not bothering to move his attention away from me and back to the sink now filling with water.

“I didn’t want you to have to do the dishes alone since you cooked and all.” I sound shy despite the gin running through my blood, making me more reckless than I would normally be.

With his eyes still on me, he opens his mouth like he wants to say something but thinks better of it when he closes his mouth and turns to the sink, cutting off the water. Finally, he says, “I’ll clean, you dry.” He hands me the dish towel that was draped over his shoulder at the beginning of the evening.

I nod as I take hold of the towel, flip it over my shoulder, and gather more dishes while he begins to clean.

We don’t talk, he washes in silence and I dry in silence. I don’t even bother asking him where the dishes go. He doesn’t seem to object to my looking through his cabinets until I find the right one.

Finally, he washes the large pot that dinner was cooked in and I’ve already spotted the empty space at the top of the dish cabinet where I think it belongs. Unfortunately for me, it’s the top shelf and just out of my reach. My pride would never allow me to ask for help on such a stupid and simple task, so, with an extra swig of gin, for better or for worse, I balance myself by holding onto the handle of the open cabinet door and prop my knee up on the counter.

Henry is still washing the last of the dishes as I hoist up, pushing down on the floor and stabilizing with my knee on the counter and my hand on the cabinet door. I make it up, swaying a little, but not falling thankfully, and slide the pot into place at the top.

I try to shut the cabinet door while I’m up here, leaning back to allow the door to pass when I start to sway. The tingling in my legs is more apparent now, the room slightly tilting on an axis and I feel my leg that was propped under me, start to give way.

I gasp but before I can fall off the counter, I feel two damp, sturdy hands brace my waist and hold me upright.

I don’t need to turn around to know whose hands steady my waist, the hands that hold me upright, that feel so sturdy that I know I’m safe when I’m in them. But I look back anyway. I see Henry’s face behind me, looking up at me with an expression that I can’t read. It’s almost a mixture of worry, caution, and annoyance, but also his signature deadpan face.

My lips part, I’m not really sure what I would say even if I had any intention to speak at all. I feel his grip tighten around me as he lifts me from the counter and places me on the ground, my hands bracing the counter in front of me.

I dare a glance back to Henry, his face is so close to mine, neither of us breaking the silence between us. I don’t know if it's the gin fogging my brain or the memories of his lips on my neck swimming to the surface, but I want to close the small distance between our lips. I think he does too. But neither one of us making the move first.

I become so painfully aware of how his front is flush against my back, there isn’t an ounce of open space between us and I can’t help but want to be even closer. My face heats and I know my cheeks are scarlet, giving away my thoughts and betraying my inner desire.

My breath hitches as I feel him push into me, my hips digging into the counter, his hands tightening around my waist. My chest rises, my heart beating wildly within, I look from his eyes to his mouth, the will to fight the desire to kiss him growing wearily thin. I would let him kiss me right now, I would let him bend me over this counter and…

I freeze when his head lowers, his lips are so painfully close to my neck. I feel the spot he would kiss heat up if he would just close the distance. God, I want him to close the distance so bad. I pull my bottom lip between my teeth when I feel the softest, most gentlest graze of his lips right where I knew he would.

I feel his breath tickle my jaw, his lips barely touching my neck and I have to grip onto the counter for dear life to keep from pushing up into him. To keep from turning around and forcing his lips onto mine, his hands onto my body.

“Henry! What’s taking so long?” I hear Charles call from the living room.

Charles’s voice startles us both, Henry’s lips leaving my neck and my head whipping around to the doorway into the living room. I forgot about the others basically on the other side of the wall. Henry’s body still trapping me against the counter. I had lost all sense of where I was and what was happening in that small amount of time.

Henry steps away and runs a hand through his hair as I completely turn around and lean against the counter. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before calling into the living room, “Give me a minute, we’re finishing up the dishes.” As he speaks, I look down and notice a satisfying bulge in his pants.

So, he wanted it just as much as I did.

I have to fight the urge to smile, I like seeing him disheveled. It’s a nice difference from the perfectly put-together, always-knows-what-to-do Henry that I see every other time.

He looks up at me, his eyes meeting mine, no words spoken between us but the tension is still so thick. So painfully thick and I want to cut it away, I want to fall into him, I want to feel him and I want him to feel me.

But I can’t.

I shouldn’t.

God, I really shouldn’t…but I want to. I want to so bad.

He seems to read my thoughts, maybe my face isn’t masking any of my emotions like I try to make it do. I blame the gin.

He blinks, and I almost think the normal, put-together Henry is back, but I watch him take a shaky breath before adjusting the waist of his pants and walking out of the kitchen after grabbing his glass, taking a swig as he goes.

I take a moment alone in the empty kitchen to breathe and breathe and drink and breathe. This is getting more and more difficult and I don’t know how much longer I can withstand this torture. If this happens again, I’m not so sure I can pull away.

I’ll have to thank Charles for the interruption or else I might have let him kiss my neck like he did that night. I probably would have let him do more.

I absolutely would have let him do more.

I grab the bottle of gin on the counter and my glass on the dining table before walking into the living room with the others.

Chapter Text

I walk into the living room, gin bottle in hand, a nice buzz in my head, and a delicious tingling in my legs and arms. Henry sits in his leather chair, Francis is sprawled out on the floor, drunk out of his mind, Charles is sitting on the arm of the couch next to Camilla, and Richard sits on the couch’s opposite end. I swerve Francis’s long, skinny leg as I make my way to sit in the middle cushion of the couch.

The little moment Henry and I shared in the kitchen sobered me up more than I would have liked and I intend to catch back up. Especially considering that Francis is lying on the rug in the middle of the floor, hand on his forehead, speaking fluent Greek and nothing else. Charles and Camilla are responding of course, Henry and Richard watching in amusement while I make myself comfortable on the sofa.

Henry’s tentatively listening as if nothing else is on his mind…

“What’s he on about?” I ask Richard before I drink from my bottle.

“Oh, just this girl that he thought was rude at the supermarket,” Richard says with a wave of his hand.

I laugh. “I thought he would be spewing some moral, profound question from some ancient scholar that he read about.”

“I almost wish he was,” Richard replies. I look at him as he watches Francis. When he looks back at me, I panic and offer him my half-empty bottle. He takes it with a smile and sips. “I don’t know how you drink that stuff.” He swigs and winces.

“I honestly don’t know either. It’s pretty gross, but it gets the job done,” I say, taking the bottle back from him.

After a bout round of laughter, the room falls silent for a moment, the only sound coming from a car driving by outside. The silence is then broken by a soft whisper uttered from Francis’s lips. “Είμαι στοιχειωμένος.”

The room stills in an almost inhuman-like way. No one dares move, dares speak, or even dares to breathe. I look around, wondering what he said. I look from Charles, whose face is suddenly so serious, hard lines etched into his mouth, to Camilla, her face stoic and unfeeling. I turn slowly to look at Henry. His eyes are down at his shoes, silent, calculating, emotionless. His hands in his lap start to fidget slightly, picking at a stray cuticle. I turn to Richard, his eyes show a hint of surprise, his mouth slightly agape.

I don’t dare disrupt the silence that has fallen like a blanket of snow over the room. I want to know what he said, it had to be something serious, something bad if this is the reaction of the room.

I wait for Richard to translate, wanting to ask him what was said, but before I can, Henry says quietly from his chair, “Όλοι είμαστε στοιχειωμένοι.”

I start to see chests move as they begin to breathe again, but still no movement. I want to take a sip from my bottle but I fear the sound of liquid sloshing will be too loud for this silence.

“Cheers to that,” Charles says, his voice breaking slightly as he raises his glass, downing the nearly full cup without a change in expression.

The tension in the room makes me wish I could sink into the couch, disappear between the cushions, and let them have whatever private moment they’re having. If I was supposed to be included in this conversation it would be in English. But it’s not.

Finally, Henry stands up and walks over to where the bottle he brought from the kitchen sits and fills his glass up. He sits back down and starts talking to Richard about his most recent trip to see Julian. Richard told me about Julian once, said that he’s an odd but pleasant man and how he finds a strange comfort in him. I know his teachings are a bit unusual, but that’s all I know about him.

The others follow in trying to spur up some type of conversation again. Francis sits up, sways, and holds up his hand to Henry waiting for something. Henry hands him the bottle without even stopping the sentence he was saying to Richard.

Francis drinks deeply and mumbles something to himself but I can’t quite hear what he says. I take a drink from my bottle and let the liquor sit on my tongue before swallowing. I have the urge to put my hand on Richard’s leg to comfort him but I hold back and try to listen ardently to whatever nonsense Henry is saying to Richard.

He’s talking about how the late snow won’t be any good for his plants. I didn’t even know Henry gardened, and I absolutely wouldn’t have guessed that either. But I like the thought of Henry, hands and knees covered in dirt, smelling like fresh soil and flowers. Maybe a slight sweat on his brow if the day is warm.

I shake my head to banish the thought.

More gin, more talking, and some laughter are brought back into the evening. If I were to be asked, I’d say I’m tipsy but I know damn well that I’m far past that. I’m flat-out drunk and I don’t think I’m sitting still, but I couldn’t tell one way or another.

The room is constantly spinning, sometimes it spins left to right, sometimes it spins forward and I feel like I’m going to fall off the couch. Sometimes I feel myself tilting into Richard’s side and he’s kind enough to let me lay there for a minute until I regain my balance.

I laugh too loudly at jokes but in my defense, I can’t hear anything very well. The gin clouds my ears and everything is louder but muffled together into one loud sound. I have to ask Francis to repeat himself multiple times, making the room laugh, but I seriously can’t hear him.

“It’s nice to see you finally loosen up around us, Lizzy,” Francis says putting a cigarette into his mouth and clumsily lighting it.

“Well,” my mind is buzzing and my mouth seems to move faster than my thoughts, “youguys are a lot nicerthanthekids oncampus say.” I try to not slur my speech but I know the more I drink the sloppier I get…

“And what do the kids on campus say about us?” Charles says laughing, his eyes closed.

“Theysay…that you guysarerude and s-standoffish. Nobody seemstoeven know anything aboutyouallreally.”

They all laugh. “Well, I suppose they’re not wrong. I see why people say that.” Francis says.

The room is spinning again and I feel myself tilting to the right, I don’t know I’m doing it until I feel Richard’s torso underneath me. He’s laughing at something someone said, I didn’t hear it of course, and without missing a beat, his arm comes around me, holding me to him.

I feel my already red cheeks get redder as I stay settled in, not fighting his arm that holds me in.

Someone comments how cozy we look, we laugh, my hand falls on his leg and I know it must look like something, but I can’t form the words to say it’s solely platonic. At least, I think it is.

I glance over at Henry and see his face expressionless. His eyes flick between the arm Richard has around me, the hand I have lying on his thigh, and back to my face.

I tilt my head at him and really look at him.

I might be drunk but I know when someone looks…jealous.

Oh my God, Henry Winter is…jealous?

This would embarrass me typically without being under the influence, but since I’m severely intoxicated, I find myself wanting to smile. I think I like seeing Henry jealous.

I don’t even think before I let myself snuggle my back into Richard’s side, putting my other hand on the arm he has across me. I laugh at something Camilla says to Francis as he puffs out smoke and let my head lean back onto Richard’s chest for a moment before lifting it again. When did my head get so heavy?

I sneak a glance towards Henry and find him sipping from his glass commenting on something Francis said. He doesn’t even look bothered…completely emotionless. How does he do that?

Somehow, Francis procures a deck of cards trying to convince us to play something I’ve never heard of. I get roped in when Richard moves to sit on the floor, his arm still wrapped around me and pulls me to the floor with him.

Only, I’m not as graceful as I think I am and I embarrassingly produce a semi-flop onto the floor and onto Richard. We’re laughing and I twist over to my stomach, my right arm draped over his chest and his face close to mine. He’s laughing, eyes closed, cheeks red, and mouth open. I watch him open his eyes and look at me, scanning my face.

I swear I didn’t mean to, I really had no control of my actions and didn’t know what I was doing until it was already done.

I pecked a kiss right on Richard’s lips.

I fucking kissed Richard. In front of everyone.

If the room wouldn’t have erupted in laughter, I wouldn’t have known what to do. But we all laughed and Richard laughed too.

Thank God for all the alcohol in our systems.

We sit up and Francis tries to explain the game, but I can’t seem to focus on anything. I look over at Henry who grabbed a book from the bookshelf next to the chair. He’s reading it but almost as if sensing my stare, he looks over at me.

I wish I could understand the stoic face that he always wears. If I pay attention enough, I can see a twitch of his lips, a narrowing of his eyes, or even a tilt of his head. But with the gin and the loudness of the room, I can’t tell what his gaze means. He looks over to Richard and back to me. I tilt my head, not entirely sure which way, but it’s tilted.

And there it is. A slight narrowing of his eyes before he goes back to his book.

So he did notice and I don’t think he liked it. Or he’s confused, maybe as confused as I am.

“Lizzy, you wanna be dealt in?” I hear from behind me, not entirely sure who said it.

“Hm?” I ask turning my head and looking at the group. I don’t even know what we’re playing but I nod my head anyway.

The game begins and I have no idea what I’m doing, I lean over to Richard and giggle every time I ask him what to do. He helps me play, seeing all of my cards but never using his advantage against me to win.

I lost track of how many rounds we played, but we played well into the evening. At some point, I woke up on the floor. Henry is gone but everyone else is talking quietly, not secretly, but just in a hushed tone.

I try to sit up and try to talk but somehow, I end up on the couch, laid out, falling back asleep with the sounds of the others in the background.

I have a dream but it’s not my usual.

This one, I’m in my bed in my room. I’m not alone. Richard is there. He’s leaned over me, kissing my neck, running his hands all over my body. I like it, but I’m scared of something.

“Richard,” I tell him, putting my hands on either shoulder while his head is buried.

He hums into my neck as he lays over me. I don’t want him to stop but I’m so scared.

“Richard, Henry is going to catch us,” I say with urgency, I try to haul him up, trying to keep his lips from my throat and jaw. But he doesn’t stop. “Richard,” his name comes out in more of a moan.

My breathing is heavy and my legs are wrapped around his waist. I don’t want him to stop, it feels so right, it feels so, so good to have him here, with me, kissing me.

“Richard,” I pant, “Henry will see us.”

When Richard lifts his head, it’s not Richard’s face I see. It’s Henry’s.

I gasp and reach up for him but he’s just too far away…because…I’m falling. I’m falling down, down, down, screaming. I try to find something to grab onto...anything to stop my descent. To keep me from falling to my death.

“Hurts, doesn’t it,” I hear Bunny’s nasally voice sound from the darkness of my plummet.

I’m so scared, no please, please don’t let me die! Please, please, please…

I jolt awake and I think I gasp but I’m not sure. The room is dark except for one very low-burning lamp on the side table next to the leather chair which Francis is currently curled up in, breathing heavily. I notice that Charles and Camilla aren’t here anymore unless they’re in another room.

I look around, my throat so dry I want to cough. But the room is so still and quiet, that I try to swallow instead.

I shift off of my numb hip and feel a body behind me. An arm is draped over my waist and I hear breathing sound behind my head.

I turn to see Richard, passed out behind me, leaning into the cushions of the couch.

Still rattled by my dream, I sit up and let his arm fall from my side as I rub my eyes, resting my elbows on my knees.

God, I need water.

I get up and sway a little before gathering myself. I shuffle quietly out of the living room and into the hall towards the bathroom when I see a low light coming from underneath the door at the end of the hall.

I stop walking and strain my ears to listen for any noise, but I hear nothing. I scrunch my eyebrows together but walk into the bathroom, quietly close the door, and brace myself for the bright electric light.

I flip the switch and am temporarily blinded enough to make me wince but I shuffle over to the toilet anyway.

After washing my hands, I splash water on my face and scrub a little, taking sips of water every once in a while until I feel a little cleaner and less thirsty. I wipe my face on a small hand towel by the sink and turn the light off, ready to leave. I let my eyes adjust to the dark before silently opening the door and stepping out.

But I see the light coming from the underside of the door and I can’t help the curiosity that rises in me. Is that Henry’s room?

I should go back to the living room. To Richard.

I make silent steps toward his room and pause when I hear the floorboards give off a soft moan under my feet but continue moving until I’m right at the door. I listen for noise, any noise, but hear nothing. Until I think I hear a page turning in a book.

Apparently, when I’m half hungover and half still drunk from the night before, I lose all sense of right and wrong because my hand is on the knob, turning, and opening.

I should have knocked…I can’t use the excuse of gin motivating my actions because I think most of it has faded by now, only the last stubborn dregs remain and make my body feel heavy and tired. A relaxed-looking Henry is sitting on his bed in the same clothes he had on last evening, in socks, with a book propped on his knee, looking up at me.

I stand there, like a complete idiot, and think about all the ways I should have knocked before entering, but he doesn’t ask me to leave or even look offended. The same deadpan expression that he always wears and it irks me a little. I have no right to be irked, I’m the one who barged into his room.

“Sorry, I-I didn’t mean to…I should have knocked…” I sound so spectacularly, utterly stupid, that I want to turn around and leave the room.

When he doesn’t say anything, I feel the need to fill the silence. “I saw the light from the hallway and was wondering why you’re still up.” I don’t even know what time it is.

He still doesn’t say anything but he looks back down at his book and if that’s not a dismissal… then I don’t know what is.

I think I should go. I turn to leave but I hear him say quietly. “Close the door.”

Does he mean to close the door when I leave or close the door right now? I don’t want to ask, and I’ve already stood here frozen for too long, unmoving in my confusion. He looks up at me, waiting expectantly.

I close the door and remain in the room.

He closes his book and sets it on the nightstand but doesn’t make any moves to stand up. I can’t tell if he expected me to close the door while still in his room or if he’s annoyed at my being here.

“Why are you still awake?” I ask in a small voice that sounds rather pitiful. I internally slap my palm on my forehead.

“I don’t sleep well.”

“Oh, why not?”

He’s silent for a second. “I was in a wreck when I was younger. I haven’t slept well since then.” He doesn’t seem particularly keen on expanding on that piece of information.

I didn’t know that about him. That must be where his scar comes from or maybe his slight limp that I notice every once in a while.

“I’m sorry,” I say, unsure of what else I can say.

“Why? You weren’t there.”

“W-well…I don’t really know what…what else to say, I suppose.” I sound pathetic with my small, stuttering voice. But I can’t control it; it’s like my brain is too fast for my mouth and my mouth can’t keep up.

He stands up and puts his hands into his pockets while he takes small, slow steps in my direction.

“What happened to the girl on the couch? Leaning against Richard, putting a hand on his leg, looking in my direction? That girl seemed to be much more gutsy than this one in front of me right now.”

My cheeks heat up, I know they’re bright red. I forgot about that. I honestly forgot a lot about the evening. But the flirting I did with Richard resurfaces…and the kiss. “That was the gin,” I say quietly as he gets closer and closer. I back up a few steps until my back is pressed against the door.

“I don’t think it was the gin.” He says looking down at me, hands still comfortable in his pockets.

My heart pounds in my chest. “What was it then,” I ask.

He dips his head down to eye level and says, “You tell me.”

My breathing is sporadic and my chest slightly grazes his when I try to take in air. He’s so close and I can’t even remember what he said. Oh God, what am I doing here?

“Were you jealous,” I ask, trying to find the bravado the gin loaned me last night, but there isn’t much left for me to use.

He stands there, unmoving, in silence for a beat too long. I start to feel anxious, trying to think of something to fill the tense quiet but before I can say anything, he whispers, “Yes.”

I suck in a breath, my heart almost skips a beat. He was jealous. I made him jealous. With Richard.

It isn’t until now that I start to feel guilt rise in me for using Richard to make Henry jealous. But, whether I like to admit it or not, it’s not the first time. When I was dancing at the party with Richard, I couldn’t help but look for Henry’s gaze after finding it the first time.

“When you leaned against him,” he’s a fraction closer to me, “when his arm was around you,” even closer, “when your hand was on his leg,” his lips are close to my ear, goosebumps forming along my skin. “And the worst part was,” his lips graze my earlobe, “you liked making me jealous.”

I close my eyes, letting out a shuttering breath. He’s right. I loved making him jealous because the only times he ever seemed to acknowledge me was when we were alone. And I know that it’s all to make me trust him, to trust the others so that I don’t tell anyone about what they did. I know it, but I don’t want to believe it.

“Admit it.” His whisper caresses my ear, his face pulls back and turns, coming into focus in front of me. He looks me in the eyes through his glasses. His pupils still dilated like they were in the kitchen. “Admit that you liked making me jealous.”

I nod, small, slight movements, up and down but I feel like my gestures are insignificant so I whisper, “Yes…I liked making you jealous.”

His eyes look down at my lips, lingering for only a minute before coming back up to my eyes.

“You’re so painfully easy to read, Lizzy.” Again, if I wasn’t examining his face already, I might have missed the slight scrunch of his eyebrows. Almost in a longing, painful gesture. His hands come out of his pockets and rest against the door on either side of my head, caging me in.

“And you’re impossible to read, Henry,” I say back in a whisper. Before he has a chance to back away before he has a moment to think better about our precarious situation, I press my palms to the door behind me and I move my head forward, and I kiss him.

I kiss him on the lips.

His lips…oh…his lips.

I caught him by surprise. He doesn’t move for a second but before I can start to feel self-conscious, he kisses me back. Bringing his hand to cup the backside of my head, he stands up to his full, towering height and kisses me back. Tilting my head up so that my lips are more accessible to him.

He kisses me again and again and again and again and I don’t think I could ever tire of this feeling.

My hands wrap around his neck and pull him closer to me.

Closer, I need him closer. I need every inch of him against me, I need to know that this isn’t a dream. This feeling in my chest, this heat in my body, this…this blissfully terrifying feeling that is as addictive as drink or drugs.

He lets a soft, longing moan come from his throat, and by God I want this man to take me right here, right now. I think he knows what I’m thinking because he uses one hand to cup my face and the other to cup my ass, pulling me into him.

I’m so out of breath, I can’t breathe but I don’t want to. I don’t want to breathe if it means parting from him…

I feel him, hard against me, and I want to feel it. I want to put my hands on it, my lips, anything. I want to please him in ways I’ve never pleased anyone. I want to make him feel good, I want…him.

Oh God, I want him.

We hear the toilet flush and we both split apart, turning our ears towards the door. Someone else is up. Both of us are practically panting, so out of breath, trying to get precious air into our lungs.

It isn’t until after we hear the door open and footsteps go down the hall, away from us, that we turn and look at each other.

Please don’t let it be Richard. Please, please, please…

I don’t know why I care about it being Richard. I don’t know why I’m trying to hide this from him…or anyone. But the thought of the others knowing about what Henry and I feel for one another…I don’t like it. I don’t want them to know about us. Is that selfish? Immature? I don’t know. I can’t pinpoint the feelings exactly, but one look in Henry’s eyes tells me that he thinks the same thing.

I pull my arms from his neck and move back as far as the door behind me allows. While taking a few steps back, his hands fall to his side, one rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger and the other going into his pocket.

He clears his throat and walks over to where his glasses are and puts them back on.

I feel like I need to say something, but words feel so wrong right now. He looks down at the floor and I don’t even know what I’m doing but I’ve turned towards the door and my hand rests atop the doorknob.

I don’t hear his voice so I use that as my cue to silently slip from his room, shutting the door quietly behind me. I’m alone in the dark hallway, trying to listen for any noise in the living room but I hear nothing. The only thing I can hear is the memory of Henry panting in my ear, his moan he lets out when I kiss him harder…

My lips still feel the ghost of him. I can still smell him, taste him.

My hand reaches up and softly grazes my lips.

I want to regret what I did. I want to tell myself that I can never let that happen again. I should remind myself that Henry is a…he’s a murderer…

Why is that not deterring my desire to do that again, to do more, to go further next time?

Next time.

Will there be a next time?

Part of me begs for a next time. That part of me would do anything to have that again, to feel him again. But also, the other part of me. The part that brings fucking logic into the equation. The part of me that tells me how wrong it is to have these feelings for someone like Henry.

“Fuck,” I whisper to myself as I make my way back into the dimly lit living room.

I assume it was Francis who got up because he’s lying on the floor now, curled up in a blanket and sound asleep, a smoking cigarette in the ashtray next to him. Richard is still in the same position on the couch.

I walk over to the couch and lie down, scooting close to Richard, away from the edge of the sofa. Without waking up, his arm moves to pull me in by the waist, his breathing still even and heavy.

I lie here with Richard, I feel Richard’s body, but…all that occupies my mind, all that consumes my thoughts into a dreamless sleep revolves around Henry.

Chapter Text

The late afternoon is surprisingly warm. I walk out of my last class of the day where, unfortunately, my teacher expressed gratitude and relief at my ‘trying to bring my grade back up’ to which I responded with a half-hearted smile and nothing else.

I walk on the freshly shoveled sidewalks, passing groups of students, and think strangely of my friends. The ones I had before everything happened. Before I saw what I saw and the events that fell into place after. The friends that I’ve selfishly pushed aside and abandoned.

It’s not that I no longer feel burdened by what I saw. It still haunts me in the very early hours of the morning when I’m trying to convince myself that I’m no longer dreaming and that whatever horrors plagued my mind aren’t real. But I find comfort, if I can call it that, in the fact that I truly had nothing to do with it and I don’t have anything to hide.

Well…besides keeping the knowledge of what I saw to myself and not telling anyone. I also find myself with thoughts of self-hatred when I think about turning anyone of the others in. Primarily Henry.

God, but that was the whole point of the plan once they saw me! I know it! They got close to me, built a relationship with me, and let me into their group with their charming demeanors and warm ambiance, just to keep me close. Just to make me trust them and to like them enough that I wouldn’t want to tell anyone.

But maybe I will…maybe I will tell someone and be rid of everything and return to the way my life was before I became enslaved by what I saw, what I happened upon.

I shake my head, ridding myself of that thought as I turn down another sidewalk, headed for my room.

I can’t do that. I know it was part of their plan but it worked, damnit. It worked and now I’m just a pawn in their game. In Henry’s game. I would be a fool to think that this game was being played and orchestrated by anyone else other than Henry. I know his cold, calculating way by what I’ve seen and what Richard has told me.

He hasn't told me everything though. Bits and pieces, enough so that I know there are some things that he is keeping from me. Some cards he’s keeping up his sleeve. To keep me from knowing it or to keep me from seeing who they really are…I don’t know.

Regardless, I’ve still left my friends behind and I feel sad about that. I feel guilty and awful and terrible. I bet they would slam the door in my face before talking to me again. I know I would.

I want to see them again. I want to patch up what I can and rebuild the trust I’m sure is lost. I want to tell them everything…well no, I suppose I can’t tell them everything…or anything, really. I would be walking back into their life without the intention of being honest and open with them. I’m not sure that would help this feeling of guilt that I have or if it would make it all worse…

I get to my room, the chilly air banished by the heat coming from my radiator. I slide my coat from my shoulders and hang it on the corner of the armoire door. As soon as I make a point to drop by Lisa’s room later today, I hear a knock on the door.

I walk over and open it to an annoyed Richard with a book and his spiral notebook in his hand.

“Hey,” he says shortly.

“Hey, everything alright?” I ask, taking in his rumpled appearance.

“Are you busy?” I shake my head side to side. “Can I come in?” I pivot, silently opening up the room to him as he walks in and sits down at my desk.

I close the door and ask him what’s going on, fearing that something bad has happened only for him to say, “Judy won’t leave me alone and I have to get this paper finished.” His brows are low and flat on his forehead, making him look serious and…fairly attractive.

I laugh a little, “knock yourself out, I was just planning on doing some homework myself.” Liar. I was going to go by Lisa’s soon but…that can wait, I suppose.

“Thanks,” he says, finally giving me half of a crooked grin. His grin is charming, very boyish, and somehow reminds me of California. I went a couple of times with my parents, the warm sun, the sand on the beaches, and the relaxed scenery, all gave me feelings of comfort.

“Anytime,” I say looking away and over to my nightstand which has my newest book on top. We don’t have another reading assignment so this one is just for fun. It’s some trashy romance novel with a half-naked man on the front with long, flowing hair, and a small woman, hand atop his chest, looking off into the distance. It’s so mind-numbingly good, I’ve found myself enjoying it because of how terrible it is and how easy it is to read. I also am enjoying the romance in it.

When I fall onto my bed, the springs squeaking slightly, I lay on my back and pick up my book, crack it open, and read as Richard silently works at my desk.

The heroine of my trashy romance novel just got saved by who she thought was her betrothed but was really her betrothed’s greatest enemy. Apparently, he was trying to save her from her betrothed because he was some awful brute, or something. Now, she’s finally warmed up to her rescuer and beginning to see her betrothed is not a great person, and, on top of that, is having quite arousing thoughts about her rescuer.

Trashy and terrible, but good.

She’s at this tavern, drinking with the rescuer’s crew because his being a pirate makes it all the more steamy, and they are indulging too much in their ale. She’s getting drunk and the heroine finds herself in a quiet little alleyway with her rescuer where she plants a big, fat, drunk kiss on his lips. They go on to groping each other in the alleyway and so on.

But I think about that drunk kiss. That drunk kiss I gave Richard a couple nights ago at the dinner.

God, I want to slap myself with my book. Why did I do that? Why did I see his cute, charming lips in a full grin, laughing that we just fell from the couch, and why did I think about kissing him? I knew I was intoxicated and I know when I get a thought in my head under the influence of alcohol, I don’t even think twice before doing it. So, he was laughing and I thought about how good his lips looked, and I…I kissed him.

If the room wouldn’t have laughed the whole thing off, I would have been mortified and told him that we couldn’t be friends anymore.

I know that some friends platonically kiss, some even platonically hook up…but the thought of doing that with Richard when another man was on my mind…I hated that.

I was thinking about how good Richard’s lips looked but I was thinking about the moment Henry and I shared in the kitchen just before. I was thinking of him watching when I pecked Richard on the lips and I was ashamed that I thinking of another while Richard was the one underneath me. I felt guilty for Richard…

I sigh and put the book on my face and try my absolute hardest to forget that ever happened. But I forgot that I’m not alone in the room.

I hear Richard's voice from my desk, “You alright?”

I freeze and slowly move my hand to lift my book to peek at him. He’s turned halfway around in the chair, arm draped over the back, looking at me on my bed.

I heave a sigh, and sit up, crossing my legs underneath me, setting my book down beside me. I don’t particularly want to tell him that I was thinking about when I drunkenly kissed him in front of the others all the while, thinking of another man the whole time.

“Just thinking,” I say without an ounce of smoothness, I have to school my features to not move into a grimace.

“About your steamy romance book?” His smile is mischievous and makes my cheeks redden.

“It’s not steamy!” I protest, even though it is, in fact, very steamy. It was in the erotica section of the bookstore but I don’t tell him that.

“Please, the half-naked man on the front gives it away.”

“Maybe it’s not like that. How would you know? Have you ever read it?” I raise one eyebrow at him.

“No, but it’s not hard to guess what it’s about…”

“Come on, come read a little. I’m sure you’d like it,” I tease.

To my complete and utter surprise, he gets up and walks over to my bed, sitting down next to me, plucking the book from my hands. He turns to the page I have marked and begins reading.

I watch his eyes scan the pages and read. My gaze flicks to his face as I watch him read when the rescuer presses the heroine up against the wall of the alleyway, saying something about her being too proper to be fucked in a dirty place like this. His cheeks redden but he doesn’t react much besides that.

He closes the book and sets it in his lap as he says, “I don’t know how you read that stuff,” yet he doesn’t meet my eye.

“Oh, you’d be surprised how easy it is to read. It’s a nice pallet cleanser after the classic literature I have to read for class.”

“A pallet cleanser?” He looks down at the book and recites a sentence or two in a monotone voice. “You like it when I fuck you rough like this? I bet your pretty little prince didn’t touch you like this?” He looks down at the book, “That’s…so crass.”

I have half a mind to believe that he’s actually embarrassed. “A lot of girls read it.” I can’t help but notice his blush running from his cheeks down to his neck.

I know Richard has had sex with girls before, but for some reason, this is making him blush harder than I’ve ever seen him blush. I can’t help but feel like I’m corrupting him, though I’m sure it would be more like the other way around.

We’re sitting so close that his thigh is almost scraping my knee, his face right in front of my own.

“So, erotica isn’t your type then?” I say taking the book from him and lying it beside me on the bed.

“No, not really.” He finally turns to look at me and his hair has fallen over his brow and his eyes are dark, his pupils enlarged.

I can’t look away from them but all I can think about is the kiss that I gave him at Henry’s. His eyes stare into mine and we sit so close on my bed as I replay the night of the dinner over and over again…

“I-I meant to talk to you about…the evening at Henry’s.” I want to ask him about the thing that Francis said when the room got serious. My inability to understand Greek left me totally useless in that situation.

This doesn’t seem to catch him off guard. “Alright,” he says.

“When Francis said something in what I assume was Greek, the room got so quiet and still.” I pause, remembering the weight that pressed in the air of the room. “What did he say?”

I’m not sure this was what he was expecting me to talk about but I couldn’t bring up the kiss…not with him sitting so close to me, blushing from my book, looking slightly disheveled.

“Oh, that,” he looks down at his hands in his lap, as if he’s gathering his thoughts or trying to remember what exactly Francis said. I wait expectantly, unmoving, almost scared. “He uhh…he basically said, ‘I’m haunted’.”

I’m haunted. Only one reason why Francis would say that, only one reason that I can think of. It’s a very interesting choice of words. I wonder if the ghost of Bunny haunts him…though if I got pushed into a ravine to my death, I would want to haunt the person who pushed me.

“What did Henry say back?” In all honesty, I don’t really know how Henry is affected by this. He keeps to himself so well, always an expressionless calm face and he never shows anything in the realm of emotion. I know he feels them, he has to. He has to feel something after pushing one of his friends to his death.

“We’re all haunted…that’s what he said, more or less.”

The way that Henry said it that night has stuck with me. He said it so quietly, so full of hidden meanings. So, he is affected by this…all of this. He feels something for what he did and he’s putting on the mask of appearing alright when he might really not be. “Oh,” is all I say. It’s all I can think to say even though I wish I would say more. There are so many thoughts racing through my head that I can’t even articulate a single one.

Breaking a small silence between the two of us, Richard says, “I don’t think any one of us is alright.”

My heart breaks a little at his confession. “I think I would be more worried if you all were completely unaffected after everything.”

He nods and rubs his hands together in his lap.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be okay. A choice was made and although I don’t know the reasoning behind it except for it being the only option Henry could come up with, it was a choice that you have to live with.” I don’t mean for it to sound harsh but that’s the reality of this situation.

He sighs, it’s shaky and short. “I’m sorry that you got dragged into this.” He turns his head towards me and I see his eyes lined with a thin layer of tears.

I don’t know what to say. I want to say that I’m sorry too, but that doesn’t feel like the right thing to say. I want to tell him not to worry about it but that is the last thing we all should be doing after this. We all should be worried.

I open my mouth to spew something that I’m sure wouldn’t even be the right thing to say when I hear a knock on the door.

We both look up, Richard is quick to swipe at his eyes, getting rid of any tears that were there. I put a hand on his knee and get up, walking over, and opening it up, to my absolute and utter surprise, to Lisa.

My face must show some sign of shock, “Lisa,” I say.

“Hey, sorry for bothering you, I…I was just walking by and thought I’d come to see you.” She sounds so shy, which isn’t very much like her, she’s more of the outgoing one. So, her being scared to talk to me makes my chest ache.

“Oh,” I turn back to Richard, “Ye-”

“I can come back if you’re busy,” she looks around me and offers a kind wave to Richard who still sits on my bed, but smiles back.

“No, umm,” Richard says, standing up and walking over to my desk, “I was just leaving.” He gathers his things and gets them in his hands. “I’ll catch up with you tomorrow Liz,” he says, excusing himself and walking out of my room and down the hall.

“I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to interrupt,” Lisa says, but I’m quick to quell her apologies.

“You want to go for a walk?” I ask her with a soft smile. I feel so terrible for how I’ve pushed her, Kim, and Heather away through all of this that’s happened. And I know how it looks. I ditch my friends for the “untouchable” and “unsociable” Greek group. I know I look like the bad friend in this scenario, but I’m hoping to change that.

“Sure,” she smiles back. I grab my coat and we leave, walking back out, and now that the sun is beginning to set, it’s starting to get a little chilly.

Starting up the conversation is the awkward part. Neither of us knowing what to say. Do we pick up where we left off? Is it rude of me to ask what she’s been up to? Since I have no idea what to say, I just remain silent as we walk.

“Heather and Kim have been asking about you.” I guess we’re just going to jump right in.

“Yeah, how are they?” I try to sound unaffected, like my old self, but something tells me that I won’t last long doing that.

“They’re good. Kim is dating Mark Campbell from her French class,” I remember Kim always fawning over Mark anytime she saw him, I’m happy for her. “Heather got the lead role in this spring’s performance. She’s pretty happy about it.”

“Wow, that’s great,” I say trying my absolute hardest to sound sincere. “I’m happy for them.” I pause. “What about you?”

She pauses, “I’ve been fine.”

Fine. Fine never means fine.

Lisa and I were the closest out of everyone. Her and I becoming friends the minute we met, and fairly inseparable until, well, until Bunny died.

I decided to ditch the act and say, “Fine? I have a feeling that’s a lie.” She looks at me and almost stops walking. Before she can get a chance to get defensive or say something else, I start speaking. “I’m sorry, that I’ve been distant,” I stop trying to walk and face her. “I was…trying to get through some stuff and I chose isolation and I’m sorry that I did that to you guys.”

She looks at me, I can tell a million things are going through her head, and a thousand feelings swirling inside her. She finally says, “You left us. During the party you left and you haven’t been the same sense, and I can’t figure out why.”

“I know…” I close my eyes for a second, willing the tears that threaten my eyes to not shed now. Please, not now. “I know, I…”

“And then after you isolated yourself,” she continues, “you started getting close with that group that we always used to make fun of. And I thought and thought and thought, trying to figure out why you would push us away and become friends with them.”

Fear swells in my chest. Has she somehow figured it out? Figured out that I was with them because I saw something…saw something I shouldn’t have. It’s no secret Bunny has been missing from campus, people have been talking about it. A few manhunts have begun but nothing of substantial scale…yet. Oh God, what if she knows something…

“Is it because you started dating that Richard kid?”

Her question throws me so severely off guard I don’t even know what to say. I’m sure I look ridiculously like a fish out of water, my mouth opening and closing, no sound coming out.

“You can tell me. He’s cute Lizzy, a cute, mysterious, California boy. Is that why you’ve gotten so close to them?”

I hate the thought of having to lie to her. I hate it with every ounce of my being, but…it’s awfully convenient. “We’re not dating…” I start off.

“But you like him?”

“Yes.” That answer was more truthful than I’d like to admit.

“You didn’t have to leave us just because you started to like him. You didn’t have to choose them over us. Kim and Heather were a little upset with you when we saw you talking with Richard, the redhead, and the big one with glasses in the cafeteria and the library.”

I somehow make a laugh come out even though I feel nothing remotely close to laughing. “I’m sorry, I didn’t intentionally choose them over you guys. They just…consumed my life and I didn’t even realize how much I’d isolated myself…I’m sorry.”

She smiles, shrugs her shoulders, and continues down the path. “It’s alright, as long as you don’t do it again.” I know she’s teasing, but there’s a shred of truth in it. Regardless, it makes me happy to see her getting closer to her old self.

But, I can’t help thinking about the closer I get to them again, the more I’m going to have to lie.

I walk next to her and elbow her as we walk together. We catch up about some drama that’s going on in the school that I’ve been less than aware of. She’s telling me about some of the classes I’ve missed, about some guy that’s been hitting on her but she isn’t sure she likes him. They went to a couple of parties since the one we were at together.

Finally, when we get back to my room, she says, “I think there’s going to be a big manhunt in the morning for Bunny, the boy that went missing. Kim and Heather are going to be there if you want to join. Mr. Murray canceled the lecture for tomorrow morning because he’s urging everyone to join in and try to help.”

A manhunt for Bunny. I knew some search parties were out trying to find him but now the whole school is getting involved and it’s still so snowy outside.

She leans in as if to tell me a secret, “I heard they’re bringing in some people from the FBI too.”

This gets my attention. My eyes are wide, I’m a little too stunned to speak. “The FBI?”

“Yeah, Heather said that Josh’s dad, who’s a police officer, told him that the FBI is sending a couple of agents here to investigate.”

Holy shit. “Wow, they think it’s that serious?” I try my absolute hardest to sound surprised, which I am, but I try to keep the fear from my voice.

“Yeah, but we’ll see if they actually show up. Josh is known to embellish his stories a bit to get people’s attention. Anyway, you in for tomorrow morning?”

“Oh, uh yeah, I’ll be there,” I say, giving Lisa a smile.

“Okay great, Kim and Heather will be excited to see you. We’re meeting in the parking lot on the north side of campus.”

I nod, and we say our goodbyes, she tells me how happy she is that we’re patching things up, and she leaves. I close my door and stand in silence for a moment before moving to take my coat off.

The FBI is coming? Does Henry know? Fuck, what the hell are we going to do if they start questioning everyone?

I want to run down to Richard’s room to see if he’s there. I want to find Henry to tell him, but they might already know. I opt to stay safely in my room for the rest of the night. Losing any ounce of an appetite that I previously was working up. I just stay put in my room, hoping, praying to anyone, that it will all be okay.

Chapter Text

I wake up so early, the sun isn’t even fully up yet. But, it doesn’t matter much since I didn’t sleep well last night anyway. Tossing and turning, awake and then asleep and then awake and then asleep, the vicious cycle repeated many more times. I would occasionally have dreams of FBI agents and Henry and fear…lots of fear. None of it was coherent enough to recall.

I get ready, not even wanting to turn on the overhead light, instead opting for the soft glow from the lamp at my desk. I make sure to throw on my snow boots, my thickest jacket, two pairs of gloves, wool socks, and many other layers.

This will be a frigid morning.

I walk out of my room and across campus to the north parking lot. There are already groups of people walking around, most of them in the parking lot itself. Some people are frantic, some are calm, some are sleepy and puffy-eyed as if just waking up.

I find Lisa and walk over towards her, Kim and Heather stop talking and watch me approach. At first, I think they aren’t even going to say anything, but then Kim throws her arms around me and Heather says something about being glad that I could join them.

I smile but in all honesty, I actually want to cry. I hate that I think about how much easier it would be pushing them away rather than potentially letting them back in and having to lie to them the closer I get. But that’s the reality of it.

They say something about how glad they are to see me and how Lisa filled them in on everything. I don’t really listen but I nod and say something in response. I’m preoccupied with looking around, however not trying to make it obvious. I’m looking for faces I recognize. Looking for Henry’s tall frame, Francis’s red hair, even Richard.

I give up trying to find them, convincing myself that they’ll be fine. With Henry as the ring leader, I’m sure they have a plan. They probably won’t even show up for this kind of stuff anyway.

As if reading my thoughts, “I didn’t think they would show up,” Heather says quietly, looking off towards the left, the opposite direction I was just looking. My head whips around and there they are. Henry with an umbrella in his hands, Francis working a cigarette over, Charles and Richard with steaming, styrofoam cups of coffee, and Camilla, hands dug into her pockets.

“I thought they would be too good for all of this,” Heather says rather snobbishly and I can’t help the anger that rises in me. The need to protect them, but I decide to say nothing.

“But Bunny was their friend, right?” Kim says. Lisa glances at me and I blink, offering her half a smile.

“Yeah, but they’re probably worried about ruining their expensive suits in the snow like this.” Heather is already getting on my nerves. I used to join in on this banter whenever they’d walk by but now, now that I know them, I can’t stand hearing her say these things.

“Or maybe they just want to find their friend in hopes that he’s okay,” I say evenly, looking over at them and not at Heather.

“I forgot that they’re your new friends,” Heather says with a surprising bitterness. I guess she hasn’t completely forgiven me yet. I don’t blame her.

“Heather,” Lisa chides, eying her. She shrugs and looks away.

My eyes are on Henry and he finally looks over and meets my gaze. His face gives away nothing but I have the urge to go and talk to him. “I’ll be right back,” I say, looking over at Lisa and giving her a small nod.

“Okay, be quick, we’re leaving with Mark and some of his buddies in a group. We’ll start when you get back.” Lisa says.

“Thanks, I’ll be quick.” I walk leave the group and I can feel Heather’s gaze like knives in my back. Good, let her watch.

I approach the others, their conversation halting when I get there.

“Hey, I wasn’t sure if I’d see you guys here or not,” I say.

“We thought it best to help out,” Henry says, deadpan, while Francis yawns.

“We? You decided and told us what to do.” Charles says, running a hand through his hair. He looks tired with bags under his eyes. Francis doesn’t look any better.

“Lisa told me that she heard from someone else that the FBI is getting involved and sending a couple of agents here.” My tone is hushed and quiet.

Henry’s eyes dart to the right and back to me, I know he’s thinking through some things. I like watching him think. “Alright, thanks for letting us know.” He doesn’t voice anything other than that.

I nod and say something about going back to my group, Francis wishing me well with a little sarcasm, mainly directed at the point that he doesn’t want to be here. I look at Richard and offer him a smile before turning back and heading for Lisa, Kim, and Heather.

I don’t completely ignore the feeling in my chest as I walk away from them. I want to stay and talk longer, I want to be with them, I’m nervous for them. But, I know that I wouldn’t hear the end of it from Heather if I did.

I return to my group, saying that I’m ready, and then head for the hiking trails towards the mountain with Mark and three of his friends whose names I don’t remember.

The manhunt is long and cold and excruciating because I know exactly where Bunny’s body lies. I know exactly where I would need to go to find it. But I can’t say anything. I can’t give any indication that I know anything because that would give everything away.

I’m so on edge that I don’t even pay attention to any conversation between the others in my group. My nose and toes are cold, my legs ache from traipsing through the snow, and I’m growing hungry and increasingly nervous the longer we go. The sun is rising but getting shielded by a thick bank of grey clouds.

I wonder where Henry and everyone else is. Are they a part of some group, walking aimlessly around or are they here only to show their faces. To maybe talk with some people and then leave? I’d assume Henry wouldn’t want to be a part of the actual hunt but honestly, I have no idea what he would do.

“What did you guys talk about?” Lisa asks me, both of us on the tail end of our group. I know she’s asking about what I said to Henry.

“Just asked them how they were holding up with everything.” The lie hurts, but I push it out nonetheless.

“And how are they feeling?”

How are they feeling? I don’t know what Henry is feeling or thinking, I can tell he’s a little antsy, but other than that, I’m at a loss. I can tell that Richard and Charles aren’t sleeping well. Francis is paranoid enough as it is, adding this on top isn’t making anything better, and I don’t know Camilla well enough to read into her mannerisms or expressions.

“They’re scared,” I say quietly.

“Scared for their friend?”

I nod.

After a beat of silence, “I’m sorry about Heather,” she says even quieter.

“It’s alright, I figured she would be the hardest bridge to rebuild.” That’s truthful. Heather has always been the most stubborn, not a forgive-and-forget type of girl. More like you-burn-me-I-burn-you-twice-as-bad type.

“She’ll be okay though, she was pretty hurt when you started…”

“Distancing myself?”

“Yeah…”

“It’s alright, I’ll try to make it up to her.”

We don’t speak anymore on the matter and to my utter happiness, we turn back around and head back for campus, obviously finding nothing seeing as we’re in the complete opposite direction of the ravine.

I get back to my room and stand over my radiator, warming my frozen fingers and cold face. I have all of two seconds before I hear a knock at the door.

“Why is everyone coming by my room?” I whisper quietly to myself. I haven’t had a moment alone in my room except to sleep in the past couple of days. I sigh and walk over, opening the door and to my complete and unmitigated surprise, Henry stands in the doorway.

I don’t say anything, he lets himself in and closes the door quietly.

“Is everything okay?” I don’t even offer him a place to sit, I’m too shocked at him being here.

He doesn’t say anything at first, his icy eyes just staring into mine. His hair is slightly disheveled from being outside, his cheeks and the tip of his nose are a soft pink, he’s wrapped in a black coat, umbrella still in his hand.

He just stands in silence and I can’t stand it. I can’t help the fear that’s been building and swelling in me. It’s on the verge of spewing and I’m trying very hard to keep it contained. But, for some reason, seeing Henry, here in my room makes the dam holding in my fear weaken.

“Please, just tell me everything is alright,” I say in a whisper.

“Well, if you mean to ask if anything bad has happened, no, not yet.” He pauses, walking over to the end of my bed and sitting down, facing me but looking at the floor. “But, I’m nervous. With the FBI coming and the snow that’s still on the ground,” he rests his elbows on his knees and clasps his hands together.

Did he come all the way here just to tell me that he’s worried? To confide in me and finally, finally, tell me what’s been going on in his head?

“How are the others?” I ask, staying rooted in my place, standing a little ways in front of him.

“Francis is on the verge of having a meltdown, he’s been smoking twice as much. Charles isn’t sober for more than five minutes. I can’t be bothered to see Richard with my headaches coming back. Camilla and I have been talking though. She’s been oddly calm about this whole thing.”

Headaches? The same headaches he mentioned the night I was at his place when he expressed why he doesn’t seem to like electric lights.

He runs a hand through his hair and I catch a glimpse of his scar above his right eye before his dark hair falls in front of it again. I can’t help but feel happy he stopped by but I’m also still so scared. Scared that the FBI is going to figure out what all of this is about and find out Henry was the mastermind behind it all. They’re going to take him away and I can’t do anything about it without incriminating myself in the process.

When I don’t say anything, he takes a shuddering breath and stands up. “Well, thanks for listening, I better be going.”

“What,” I ask, snapping out of my thoughts. “You’re leaving already?”

He nods and walks past me to the door, reaching for the doorknob.

“You’re already leaving after being here for not even five minutes? I’ve been worried sick about you and you just pop by to say that, and then leave?” I didn’t mean for it to come out in the sharp tone that it did, but I can’t take it back.

His hand that was resting on the knob falls as he turns his head, searching his face. “Well, I don’t have much time, I’m supposed to meet Charles and Francis.”

“Right, well I suppose you better get going then.” My tone is so angry and I don’t know why. The fear that filled my chest moments ago is souring and turning to anger before my eyes and I’m finding myself taking it out on Henry.

He stands unmoving from his position. I get even madder when I think about how handsome he looks with his tousled, messy hair, his coat that’s wrapped around him, his pale skin, and his soft lips. I don’t know where this anger comes from but it’s boiling and aching for a release and poor Henry is the one that’s in front of me. But I want to kiss him as much as I want to yell at him.

“Is that all,” he asks.

“Is that all?” I throw his words back in his face with a tone that shows my bitterness.

He waits for an answer.

“No, Henry, that isn’t all! I’ve been so worried about you, about everyone, and it’s driving me crazy because I don’t think you think about me half as much as I think about you!” I wish I could have kept those words in. I would give anything to rewind that exact moment and say something, anything, different, but I can’t. I can’t take it back, I’ve already said the words and he’s already heard them.

“What makes you think that?” He’s fully facing me now and I feel so small in his presence.

Suddenly I don’t have any words to say. Every word I wanted to say dissipates as he looks down at me from the door.

Taking a step towards me, he says, “I think about you every day. I’ve thought about you since the day I turned around and saw you in the brush, tears in your eyes, fear on your face. I’ve thought about you more times than you can imagine, Lizzy.”

I shake my head, closing my eyes, “No, no you haven’t Henry.”

“Yes,” my eyes open back up as he takes another step towards me, “I have.”

My breathing is shaky but I keep my feet planted firmly in place as he gets so close to me, our bodies are only inches from touching.

“I wish you didn’t see what you saw that day, I really do. But I’m a selfish man.” His face is close to mine, I want to reach up and press my lips to his, to feel how soft and warm he is, but I’m frozen. “I’m a selfish man, Lizzy, and I…” his eyes flutter closed as his lips graze mine, “I’m happy you were there. I’m glad you stepped on that fucking twig, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

God, I wish I could summon the anger I just felt for him, and remind myself why he drives me crazy in the worst way possible, but with his lips so tantalizingly close, I can’t think of anything else other than what he just said.

I open my mouth but he interrupts me by crashing his lips onto mine. I’m so surprised yet so relieved to feel him again. I don’t waste any time, I grab his face, run my hands through his hair, and kiss him back with every ounce in my body and I don’t have any intention of parting from him for a good long while.

Oh, Henry Winter, you will be the death of me.

His hands run up my neck, cup my face for only a minute before moving back into my hair and cupping the base of my head. His thumbs brush my cheeks and the motion is so tender it makes my insides melt.

I’m so tired of having bits and pieces of him. I’m so tired of tasting him and nothing else. I want to devour him. I want to hear my name on his lips when our bodies are pressed together, I want to hear him pant, I want to hear his approval when I’m pleasing him.

I don’t let another thought go by without action to back it up. I move my hands from his hair, unfasten his coat, and shove it off his shoulders. I run my hands down his body and catch the hem at the bottom and pull it upwards so that his sweater is up and over his head in a matter of seconds.

I pull back for a moment, he’s only in a white undershirt, tucked into his slacks with a black belt around his hips. God, he’s not even naked yet and I can’t look away. He looks so strong without being bulky, he looks like the hard-working academic that he is and I can’t get enough of him.

His breathing is heavy as he looks me in the eyes and nowhere else. He rushes back in for another kiss, getting my coat off and stripping me of my layers until he reaches under the final one and finds my hot skin underneath.

The feeling of his rough hands on my skin makes me lean into him even more. A sound comes from his chest and out against my mouth when his hands glide across the skin of my sides and up my back. His lips lock onto my jaw, my neck, kissing and sucking and I can’t think of anything else I would rather him do.

I work his undershirt free from his belt and pull it over his head, running my cold fingers over the warm skin of his back, dragging my nails over it lightly, causing goosebumps to rise across his pale skin. His mouth is at the neck of my undershirt, pulling it up over my head and pulling my bra over with it, not even bothering with the clasp.

"Certe mortuus sum et ad portas coeli sum,” he says quietly under his breath. I can’t be bothered to ask him what it means as I stand bare-chested in front of him.

His lips trail down my sternum, down to my navel, and back up as his rough hands cup my breasts, forcing me to suck in a sharp breath. He looks up at me as his mouth finds one of my nipples, sucking on it and occasionally biting it, pulling a soft moan from my lips.

I can’t stand our lips being apart any longer. I pull him up and kiss him again, pressing my chest against his, our skin warm against each other and it’s so deliciously intoxicating.

I want to sink to my knees in front of him, to take off his belt and pants with savory slowness, to watch his eyes gaze upon me as I please him. Pulling delicious, carnal noises from him. But as I’m about to drop to my knees, tired of only thinking about it and not doing it, he cups the underside of my ass and picks me up with ease. I wrap my legs around his waist only for him to walk me to my bed and lay me down.

I don’t release his waist from my legs, wanting him to stay this close to me forever. But he works his way out, parting our lips, only to kiss back down my body, down to the top of my jeans. My insides are melting, craving his touch. I need any form of friction I can get or I might very well explode.

He runs his hands up my calves, up my thighs, up to the button, and undoing it with terrible slowness. I fight the urge to do it for him just so it can be done faster, but I wait and watch him. His eyes locked on mine as he unzips the zipper and pulls them down along with the layer I have underneath them. He slowly removes them from my legs, dropping them on the floor and looking back at me, sprawled on my bed in nothing but my underwear.

He gets down on his knees and trails kisses up the inner part of my thigh, I’m practically squirming under his touch, on the verge of begging him to be faster.

I’m about to voice my impatience, but as if reading my thoughts, I feel his large hands run up my sides and down over my stomach, catching the waistband of my underwear, pulling them down with agonizing slowness.

He gets them off and onto the pile with the rest of my clothes and just looks at me, draped over my bed, legs spread wide for him, laid bare for him.

He whispers something that isn’t English and I don’t have the wherewithal to think about it before his tongue is warm and wet against me, right where I need it. A moan escapes my throat, my head thrown back as he tastes me.

God, he knows exactly what he’s doing and it feels…exquisite. His pace is quick but unhurried. He pulls moans and sighs out of me with such ease, that I can’t help but reach my hand down and grab his hair.

He hits a beautiful, wonderful spot, forcing my thighs to wrap around his head and my hips buck off the bed, but he wraps his arms around my hips, forcing me back down onto the mattress.

“H-Henry,” I whisper. He responds with a moan, the vibrations running from him into me feel divine.

I feel a pressure building low in my gut, my mouth open though no sound comes out. He removes one of his hands that holds me down and trails it along my side and right toward my entrance. He doesn’t hesitate before pushing in a couple of fingers. The pressure is just right and his tongue is working tediously in tandem with his fingers to build and build and build what I’m craving most right this very minute.

I feel myself on the verge of my orgasm, I grip his hair tight as I’m pushed so close to the edge without falling over. When I look down at him, trapped between my legs, he looks up and the minute his eyes meet mine, I’m encompassed with pleasure and the beautiful feeling of ecstasy as I plunge into my orgasm. My legs clamped tight around his head and a string of moans coming out without the decency to stay quiet.

He brings me down from my high, my hand and legs loosening from around his head. His lips parting from mine as he stands up. I raise my head to look at him, I can’t decide what I like more, the wetness around his mouth or the hard bulge in his slacks.

I push aside the dregs of my weakness from my recent orgasm and sit up, sliding to the end of my bed and standing. I kiss him hard, immediately using my tongue and tasting myself on his lips. I think I would do anything for this man, anything just to make him happy.

I turn him around and without parting our lips, use my trembling, weak hands to unfasten the belt around his hips. After struggling for a second, I tear apart from him in frustration as I look down and use my eyes to help me unbuckle his belt. When I slide it from the belt loops, I graze his hard cock with the back of my hand, forcing him to suck in a sharp breath.

I unfasten his pants and pull everything down, exposing him how he exposed me. Before I can get a good look, I push him down on my bed, the springs mercifully quiet for now. When he’s on my bed, cheeks pink, chest heaving for breath, I take in everything before me.

God, he’s so fucking beautiful and it makes my insides molten. His large body looks even bigger on my small bed, his fairly trim waist all the way down to his stiff cock, begging for attention.

My mouth practically waters at the sight laid bare before me.

I pull his pants off the rest of the way leaving him only in his black socks, not even bothering with them when he suddenly sits up and pulls me in for another kiss. Hot and heavy, he pulls me down on top of him, I catch myself on the mattress behind him and straddle his hips, feeling his cock press into me.

I pull my mouth away from his and move my hips back and forth, instinctively, and am immediately rewarded with his needy groans.

I can’t wait a single second more. I want him inside me with every ounce of my being, fully inside me, panting in my ear.

I lift my hips, using my hand to guide him towards my entrance. When the tip is against me, I ease down just enough to tease him with only the tip. His eyes squeezed shut behind his glasses, he almost looks like he’s in pain.

I stay at this level for a minute, letting him writhe beneath me, but also letting myself adjust to his size, little by little.

“Please, Lizzy…please just…” his quiet pleas, interrupted with quick intakes of breath, are a preamble for a noise of surprise when I lower myself the rest of the way, to hell with going slow.

Oh God, I’m sunk all the way down, the pressure of his cock buried inside of me makes me moan loud and lewd. I don’t care who hears us right now, I don’t care about anything other than the man beneath me and inside of me.

I rock my hips back and forth, feeling him move inside of me, feeling him fill me completely. Watching his face, his beautiful face, eyes closed, eyebrows scrunched together, teeth gritted together occasionally parting for a moan to escape.

I start bouncing on top of him and he’s even louder than before, opening his eyes to watch me on top of him. He pants my name, breaths coming in fast and short; God, he sounds and feels so good.

I feel him deep inside of me and I can’t help but want more. I want more of him, I want him closer even, I want him deeper inside of me.

I stabilize myself with my hands on his chest while I rock my hips with my movements and I’m so turned on I feel myself on the brink of another orgasm. I’ve never been this affected by a man I was having sex with.

I’ve never felt like this.

My pace is fast but not fast enough. I want more, I want more, I want more!

I bend over and kiss his beautiful mouth, my pace slowing down as I’m distracted. I kiss him and he kisses me. Using this opportunity of my laying on top of him, he thrusts up into me, quick and deep.

I gasp at the surprise of his thrust, so deep in me, without even parting his lips from mine. My chest is pressed firmly against his, my mouth on his mouth, as his pace speeds up. His moans are louder when we separate, my name sounding so good on his lips.

I go to sit up but he follows too, quickly and easily spinning so that I’m on my back, whining in protest to him removing himself from inside of me. But before I can say anything, he stands in front of me, to the side of my bed, and bends over me, pushing himself all the way into me once again.

How can this feel so right, so good, so perfect? He’s bent over me, my legs spread wide for him, as he increases to a wonderful, quick pace. His head is buried in the crook of my neck, my arms wrapped around his back, scratching downward. He’s found the spot underneath my ear, where I love it most for him to kiss and suck, and he stays there a while as his pace becomes wild.

“God, Henry,” I pant, pulling myself closer to him. The pressure is building and building and building. His relentless pounding is going to give me another orgasm soon and I’m prepared to beg for it if I must.

His head lifts from my neck, looking me deep in the eyes as he fucks me, one hand cupping my face and the other holding up the underside of my thigh.

“You feel so good,” he whispers unsteadily above my lips.

Hearing Henry say this to me, hearing him sound so pleased and needy for more, that alone is enough to make me see stars.

I want to be everything for him.

I reach up and kiss him right as he hits an exquisite spot within me, making me cry out into his mouth. He sucks and tugs on my bottom lip as he pulls away. Fucking me within an inch of my life, my orgasm is right there, I’m on the edge, I can practically taste the euphoria of what’s to come.

“Please Henry, I’m go-”

Without another word, the hand that cupped my under-thigh moves to my clit. The pressure alone gets me so precariously close, but then he starts frantically rubbing. His own moans and sounds of pleasure release as I’m brought to another wonderful orgasm, closing tight around him.

I think I cry out his name as pleasure takes over the entirety of my body. His relentless pace not slowing down. My orgasm lasts longer than I’ve ever experienced and I’m holding onto him for dear life.

I hear him curse into the crook of my neck, as he abruptly pulls out and I feel warm liquid cover my stomach.

I’m not even coherent enough to form a single thought let alone a single sentence. We both lie there, Henry hovering above me, us both breathing heavily. My body still spasming occasionally as he slowly rises from on top of me.

He walks somewhere but I don’t see where, I can’t even move even if I wanted to. I’ve never felt like that after I've finished with a man. My eyes close as I savor everything we just did.

He comes back and a soft tissue swipes across my stomach, cleaning me. I open my eyes and watch him clean me with effective swipes, he uses the entire tissue before tossing it into the trashcan.

My eyes droop sleepily, my body still tingling with pleasure as he hovers over me. I feel myself turn and my head settles onto a pillow. Henry’s eyes look down on me and he leans in and kisses me so softly and so tenderly, I think I let out a small moan.

Far beyond satisfied, I let my eyes shut, my mind drifting off and dragging my body along with it into a pleasant, dreamless sleep.

Chapter Text

I wake up to a faint glow from outside. My eyes adjust to the room, slightly puffy from sleep. I turn my head to look at the clock on my nightstand. It’s nearly five in the afternoon.

I sit up and feel my blanket slide from my bare shoulder, sending chills over my skin and down my spine. I reach back for the blanket and wrap myself up again, looking about my room. I reach up and rub my eye and freeze.

Remembering the events from earlier, I can’t help but sit here idly, stuck in the moments held in my memory. The memories of Henry kissing me, tasting me, fucking me. How he panted my name and made me nearly see God.

But, I’m immediately drawn from those delicious thoughts by the sheer emptiness of my room. No Henry to be seen. I can’t help but feel a swell of sadness at the prospect that he isn’t here when I wake up. Perhaps next to me, cradling me in his sleep, or even sitting at my desk, reading a book from my collection. Or playing a soft record while sipping at some tea or instant coffee from downstairs.

But with it being about five in the afternoon, I can't expect him to lay around all day, I'm sure he had things to do.

The ache in my chest swells slightly, but I try my best to push it aside. I wince slightly as I move to stand, making a smile form on my lips at the thought. I move over to my armoire, wrapping a robe around me, and tying it tightly at my waist. I smooth my hair down as I leave and head for the bathroom down the hall.

I yawn and shuffle my way over, closing the door behind me as I freshen up. Taking my time, getting lost in heavenly memories, I leave and walk back to my room. Judy catches me in the hall and makes a remark about my appearance in a good-hearted joking sort of way, I laugh it off and make it back to my room.

My stomach grumbles, empty and offering me pangs of hunger. As I get dressed, I can’t help but feel… well-rested. I suppose the last time I felt this well-rested was when I blacked out on whatever pills and alcohol I ingested at that party.

I tug at my bottom lip with my teeth and smile, thinking more about it. My hungry stomach reminds me of where I was getting ready to go.  I slip on the same clothes from earlier today, picking them off the floor and sliding them on, taking my time. After I get my snow boots on, I slip into my coat and leave my room.

Once outside, the cold Vermont air is sharp in my lungs, but as I breathe it in and out, I feel calm and at ease. Though I’d be foolish to think this feeling will last, especially considering the circumstances that insist on drowning me, I try not to think about it.

But, alas, I do.

It’s as if, stepping out of my room has brought me back to the reality around me. As students walk by on the sidewalk, throw snowballs at each other, or even make silly snow angels on the ground, I can’t help but let the dooming feeling return.

The FBI agents have come, according to the gossip of the school. Bunny’s body is still nowhere to be found, and I know the stress weighs on Henry, on Richard, on the others. I know Henry will think through everything to do, but there’s no guarantee what will happen with something so complex and daunting.

The words I told Henry earlier today still seem to fill my chest. How I worry about everyone and everything and how it’s driving me absolutely crazy just sitting around and doing nothing.

Where did the moment of peace I felt when I woke up go? Where did the moment where I thought happily about Henry and my life run away to? To some deep, dark shadowy part of my mind that is so hard to find these days. Hiding along with the joy that comes with life, with sex.

How did the moment I shared with Henry somehow make my fear and anxiety increase nearly tenfold? When we were laid bare in front of one another, in each other's arms, hiding nothing between us for only a little while. How does it feel like it's already slipping away from me, out of reach?

Is it because I’ve emotionally invested myself to a point of nearly no return?

I don’t even see where I’m going as I run into a student, my shoulder clipping his and spilling the books in his hand to the ground. I mumble my apologies as I help him pick them up, and continue down the sidewalk, not even looking up into his face.

That has to be it. It’s because I’ve emotionally invested myself more so than I thought I already was. That’s why I don’t, and possibly won’t, be free of this torment that possesses my mind when I think about the events that surround us, at least until everything blows over. Or until someone is put behind bars. That thought alone is enough to twist my stomach and nearly steal away my appetite.

How could I have let myself get so involved in something I know nothing about?

When I reach the cafeteria, I open the doors and am greeted by the fully blasting heaters. Between the heaters and the ovens in the kitchen, the large room is nearly stifling. I take my coat off as I scan the tables and the faces that crowd the space, the noise loud with many different conversations.

I find Kim as she waves a hand in my direction, Heather sitting across from her looking at me. I walk over and push the spiraling and terrifying thoughts from my mind as I greet them and sit next to Kim, facing Heather.

“We were just wondering where you’ve been all day,” Kim says cheerily.

“Oh,” I look between the two, “I wasn’t feeling well, so I just took a couple sleeping pills and knocked out.”

“Are you feeling better?” Heather’s voice sounds from across the table, easily heard over the loudness around us.

“Yeah, I think I was just tired after this morning.” That’s not specifically a lie, I was tired. I suppose though, every good lie is mixed with the truth.

Heather nods and purses her lips.

“Where’s Lisa,” I ask, noticing her absence.

“She’s tutoring someone and couldn’t make it, told us to go without her. We came by your room and knocked but no one answered. Those sleeping pills must’ve worked.” Kim laughs a little as she says it.

“I didn’t even hear it,” I laugh back. “Sorry about that.”

“Oh it’s no problem, that Henry kid told us you needed some sleep, so we left,” Kim says as if an afterthought.

“Henry?” My head snaps in her direction. I know that reaction wasn’t the most natural, and I kick myself a little for it, but I can’t help my piqued interest at hearing his name. “He was there when you guys were coming to dinner?” If they talked to him before coming here then he must have stayed a little longer than I thought. It still does little to quell the feeling I felt when I realized he was gone, but it's something to think about.

“Yeah, we passed him when we were leaving, he was coming out of the bathroom. He’s pretty intimidating up close,” Kim smiles, toying with the fork on her plate.

“What did he say?” I ask, trying my hardest to sound nonchalant, which I think Kim believes but I’m not sure Heather does.

“Just that you were tired and needed some sleep,” Heather speaks up. “He was pretty to the point like he needed to leave and we were inconveniencing him.”

“Oh, he’s always in a hurry, it seems,” I say meeting her eye. I have a feeling she knows more than she lets on. Maybe she knows I slept with him.

Kim’s voice brings my attention back to her, “Yeah, I don’t know much about him but he seems to always be busy and never says much. Again, he’s intimidating.”

I laugh and agree light-heartedly. Changing the subject by asking what’s for dinner. After a rather unappetizing description, I get up and get a plate for myself. When I get back to the table, I settle in while Kim and Heather talk about one of their classes.

The food is decent enough, nothing fancy, but it feels nice as it settles my stomach. I’m lifting a bite of potato when I catch Richard’s eyes from across the cafeteria. He smiles and comes over to me.

“Hey Richard,” I say, painting a soft smile on my lips.

“Hey,” his eyes seem to examine me, but I’m not sure why, “how are you guys?”

“Good,” I say looking at the others.

“Good, drowning in homework though,” Kim says, lightening the mood. Heather says the same. “You should join us, but Heather and I are about to leave,” Kim looks at her watch, “we have a study session in fifteen minutes.”

Richard looks at me. “I don’t have anywhere to be,” I say, motioning to the seat across from me. He smiles slightly and nods before leaving and getting food for himself.

Kim and Heather make idle chitchat until Richard comes back, to which they include him in their conversation. Some type of debate from one of Heather’s classes. I find my mind roaming to different thoughts and topics. I want to ask if Richard has seen Henry, but I don’t want him to ask why and I don’t want to sound desperate.

I hide a laugh to myself at the prospect of me not wanting to sound desperate. When was the last time I was worried about something so small and insignificant as sounding desperate to a man? Lately, my worries have been centralized on not getting caught for a murder I didn’t commit but one that I knew about and kept secret.

That makes the laugh die in my chest, turning into a heavy stone that sinks into my stomach.

“You alright?” I hear from the table in front of me. Richard’s eyes are on me and I realize that Kim and Heather are also looking at me.

“Hm?” My eyes flick between the three of them, “yeah, why?”

“You just looked…deep in thought.” I know Richard will see deeper into my mood, but the others seem to brush it aside because it doesn’t mean the same to them as it does to Richard. Seeing as there has only been one thing consuming my every thought for a while now.

“Just thinking, sorry,” I sit up straighter and push my half-eaten plate slightly away from me.

“Well, Heather and I should probably go,” Kim says as she stands and Heather joins her.

“Have fun,” I say smiling as they gather their things.

“Yeah, we probably won’t, but thanks,” Heather says as they walk from the table.

They say their goodbyes and leave Richard and I alone. The crowd around us has died down a little since when I got here, but there’s still a steady soft roar as people around us have conversations of their own.

Finding a moment of awkward silence between us, I’m unsure of what to say. Richard and I don’t normally have this, which I think he feels too.

“How long did you stay this morning?” He asks, picking at a carrot on his plate.

Assuming he’s talking about Bunny’s manhunt, “Oh, I don’t know, a little bit. I didn’t keep track of time. What about you guys?”

“Not very long, I think Henry was getting tired of Francis’s complaining,” Richard smiles a rather attractive closed-lipped smile.

“I don’t see Francis as one who enjoys being out in the cold weather.”

He laughs, “No, he’s not one for being in the snow, especially that early in the morning.”

The conversation is easy as it picks up with him again. But, even talking with Richard and looking at him, I can’t help but think of Henry.

In fact, multiple days go by and my mind keeps thinking about him throughout the week. Despite my time in classes, despite my time with Lisa or Kim or Heather. And the thoughts aren’t quelled because I’ve hardly seen him.

When I first spotted him walking across campus, I merely just watched him walk, head down, as if in thought, as he walked with his umbrella, using it like a cane. Another time, I saw him walking towards the lyceum alone. When his eyes found mine, where the hope briefly blossomed in my chest, it was quickly suffocated by his turning down another sidewalk, completely ignoring me.

I hate to admit how much that affected me. I hate to think about the hurt feelings I felt when he averted his eyes from mine, took a different path to not cross with mine, and even later in the week when he left his food, only half-eaten, in the cafeteria to avoid me.

Though I know he has a lot on his plate and our sleeping together holds no promises of anything, I can’t help but feel so foolish and alone the more he avoids me.

I trapped him once in conversation. He was talking with Charles and Richard and I came up to Richard and said something unimportant, which I then asked Charles and Henry how they were doing. Charles was polite enough to greet me and ask the same back, to which he looked pointedly at Henry to answer.

He said a simple, “Good, thanks,” before looking down and refusing to look back at me for the rest of the conversation. Feeling stupid and irritated, I left them to their conversation. I didn’t shed tears in my annoyance, confusion, and loneliness. I wouldn’t let myself.

I didn’t expect much to sprout from the day we slept together, but that small part of my heart aches in thinking that Henry wants nothing to do with me. So, naturally, I start openly avoiding him.

When I speak with Richard and he comes up with Francis or Camilla, I make an excuse to leave. I think Richard catches on but I don’t pay it any mind as I make it clear to Henry that I’m as unaffected as he is, though I know it’s only a cover, he doesn't though.

In Henry’s avoidance, my nightmares return. Shifting to a different terror every night. Sometimes it’s the others, mouthless and terrifying as I fall from the cliff. Sometimes it’s interrogation rooms and prison that makes me wake up covered in sweat and with a fast-beating heart.

Sometimes I dream of Bunny. Sometimes I think I can hear him even when I’m awake.

Those are the nights I cry. Those are the moments that I allow myself to be a college-aged girl, terrified of where her life is now and petrified of where it might go in an unforeseen future.

One night in particular, when I spent some time trying to figure out if I was awake or dreaming still, shaken, and far from falling asleep again, I found a half-drunk bottle of gin in a drawer at my desk. Not sure where it came from, I’ve made a couple of trips to the liquor store, but I don’t think long on it before screwing off the lid and taking a drink.

Sometimes it helps me fall back asleep, sometimes it makes me stare at a corner of my room, occasionally remembering to blink. Sometimes, the gin blankets me with the ever-loving feeling of self-pity. Filling my head with negative thoughts that I’m no stranger to but more susceptible to in my vulnerable state.

I’m annoyed at my jumbled emotions, I’m annoyed at the situations that fill my life, I’m annoyed at the feelings I have towards the man who seems to want nothing to do with me, I’m annoyed that the fact that I push away anyone close to me when I slip into moments like this.

I’m annoyed and tired and in desperate need of semblance, some ounce of peace.

Feeling particularly down, I take a late-night stroll outside. The snow slowly melting off, but the air still cool at night, pleasantly combating the warmth lent to me by the gin in my system.

I hear music faintly coming from somewhere but pay it no mind. As appealing as getting drunk and possibly high at a party sounds, I don’t wish to be around a lot of people. The need to fake conversations with people I don’t care about or even to don a mask to hide how I truly feel isn't even remotely tempting.

I walk down the shoveled sidewalks and enjoy the silence, but wish for my brain to quiet as well. I stop walking when I notice a familiar figure sitting on a bench at the end of the campus’s border, drinking amber liquid from a bottle.

I don’t miss the quick feeling of desire for it to be Henry, but I shove it aside as I walk over and join Charles on the bench, saying nothing as I sit.

He doesn’t say anything as he hands me the bottle. I feel like I should say something but I can’t find it in my mind to do so. Ultimately, I take the bottle from his hand and tip it up, letting the contents - whiskey - fall into my mouth. The burning subsides into a smooth, smokey flavor. Handing the bottle back, he takes another drink.

He sways where he sits and I know the empty nature of the bottle is his doing. I’m startled when he starts laughing.

I just watch him, not sure if I should laugh with him or let him have a moment to himself. I decide on the latter.

Finally, he speaks, “This is so fucked up,” a drunken smile splayed on his lips.

“Cheers to that,” I say taking the bottle from him and taking another drink before putting it back in his hands.

“Why haven’t you told anyone?” His question catches me off guard for multiple reasons. The first being his volume to which he speaks openly, toeing the line of what he should and shouldn’t say aloud. The second being the deep question I’ve asked myself many times since that day.

I never owed anything to any of them on that first day. I could have told the police and had a clean conscience, under the impression that I was a good citizen and helping rid the world of murderers.

But now...now I’ve dug a hole so deep for myself, I find myself caring far more than I should about people that I'm not sure truly care about me. They care if I open my mouth, but their politeness is just formal. Probaby to humanize themselves to an outsider in a school that thinks of them as a cult-like group.

I've even grown to feel something deeper than simply caring for some of them. Yet that opens new sets of challenges.

I can't stand the thought of any of them getting pinned for the murder. I know they did it and I still don't have all the answers as to why, but for some twisted, dark, reason, I believe them in whatever reasoning they have. I wish I didn't, but I do.

I've seen small moments where Henry even seems shaken by what he's done. Richard and the others suffering as well. I know they feel the pain and guilt of losing Bunny, of killing him, I just don't know why.

“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. He turns to look at me, his eyes glossed over. “I’ve asked myself that since that first day. I didn’t owe you guys anything. But now…” I look out over the dark campus, the night still and quiet around us. “Now I find myself burdened with this terrible feeling that can best be described as caring.”

Charles lets a brief laugh out through his nose, tipping the bottle back again. “Lucky you.”

“Lucky me.” I tilt my head back and look up at the stars. The night is clear and I hope the clear sky is a sign of nicer weather to come.

We sat in each other’s company for a little while longer, sharing the bottle between the two of us until it was empty. I asked if he was alright to get home, even though I knew him not to be, I left after he nodded and told me he was.

I slept that night, dreamless, yet my body still restless, insisting on destroying me from the inside out. 

Chapter Text

When I wake, I take my time getting ready, waking long before my alarm is set to go off. The conversation with Charles from last night sits heavy on my mind. I can’t shake the way he spoke, how he looked.

At the moment, I don’t think I properly processed it all, under the influence of gin and whiskey. His posture was slumped, he looked so defeated and beaten by life. The bags under his eyes were stark against his skin. His hair was dull and unkempt. His usual charming nature was gone, abandoned, and replaced by what looked to be hopelessness.

Not to mention the way he spoke - his voice was soft and quiet. Charles is typically well-liked by anyone who meets him, I’ve seen glimpses of that Charles and find myself drawn to him like so many others. But last night, it seemed that he also wears a mask for others, the bravado false and simply just a performance to keep aesthetics up in the time after Bunny’s death.

I find myself relating with Charles more than I care to admit.

But I still try, even if it feels like a lost cause, to find the normalcy of my life again. I try to make that mask permanent as if I can force myself to be alright. To be back to normal.

I walk from the lecture hall and into the sunny day, the snow is melting fast, fast enough for a body to be found any day now. The manhunts are still going on and it’s only a matter of time before someone stumbles over him. Over Bunny, laying at the bottom of the ravine, surely limbs splayed at odd angles.

The thought makes my stomach churn. My small hangover from the night before, a pounding in my head, is not helped by the bright sunlight, but I’m thankful for the warmth on my skin nonetheless. I look over at a tall, willowy figure leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette between his pale, almost skeletal fingers. I wave at Francis and walk over to him, noting that he’s alone.

“Hey,” I say as I feel my skin chill in the shadow of the large maple tree. I look at the small watch on my wrist and say, “I thought you had lecture for another twenty minutes?” I nearly have Richard’s schedule memorized with how much we’ve been with each other.

“Julian let us out early.” He pauses, taking a drag of his cigarette. “Hey, we’re having dinner at the twins’ apartment tonight, you should come.” He says it with casualness, almost like an afterthought.

I smile and say, “Oh, I don’t know, Lisa and Heather are coming by my room later and I don’t think they’d be happy if I ditched them.”

“Oh come on, it’ll feel weird without you there.” For some reason, I don’t believe that. I don’t delude myself into thinking that I’m a part of their group. But I can’t help but feel a spark of flattery that he would say that at all.

“I don’t know Francis,” I fidget with my hands, picking at some loose skin around my thumb.

“How about I pick you and Richard up before and we can all go together?” He puts his cigarette out against the tree before dropping it to the ground.

I think for a moment. “Alright,” I say reluctantly. Francis gives me a soft smile before saying he’ll come by my room later, dinner is at eight. Despite my knowing that I’m not a part of their group, knowing that I will never be a part of their group, I can’t help the pull I feel towards them. Almost like I do, in fact, long to be a part of their group and I’ll do whatever I can to make it true, even if it is a falsity.

He smiles before he leaves and I walk back out into the sun, immediately warming up as I head to commons to grab a quick lunch before heading to my next class.

—

“What Heather means to say is that you’ve been keeping secrets again and we can tell.” Lisa tries to make Heather’s comment less venomous but I still feel cornered, paranoid, and nervous, like they know something.

I chose to remain silent, not sure what to say to their response after I told them that Francis and Richard are coming to pick me up for dinner.

It would be so much easier if I could say, ‘Yes, I have some secrets I’m keeping, but believe me, you don’t want to know. I’m keeping a murder secret from everyone because I thought they would kill me when I stepped on that goddamn twig on that day. I’m keeping a secret that I slept with the murderer and I’m even keeping a secret from myself that I think I’m falling for him faster than I like to admit. Not to mention the complicated feelings I have for my friend and I don’t feel like I have a single person to turn to to make me feel normal again and I fear that I won’t ever feel normal again.’

That thought alone makes me nearly tear up.

I’m so fucking scared that I won’t be normal ever again, that I won’t even know what normal is anymore. This whole situation has consumed my entire being and I don’t think I can handle it. I’m tired. I’m so tired.

“I’m sorry,” I finally say.

“Is it a guy?” Lisa startles me with the question, but she looks at me pointedly for an answer. If I wasn’t examining her features, I would likely miss the look that she’s extending me an olive branch. Offering me a peace treaty by singling down the secrets I’m keeping so that I can share this with them but nothing else if I’m not ready.

“A guy?” I think back to when Lisa and I first talked, how I alluded to liking Richard to get her off my back. But now, I don’t know if I can continue that lie. To put Richard in another lie would cloud me with more guilt and I fear I’m close to my breaking point of secrets.

But it is awfully convenient. I’ve mentioned it to her once, and how easily she would believe me if I confirmed it. I could make up some lie about how we’ve started dating, keeping it secret from each other’s friends, like some modern-day Romeo and Juliette.

I’m tired of secrets though. So I make a vague nod. Yes, part of it is about a guy, a guy that I don’t even want to admit to because he hasn’t seen me since we had sex in this very room.

“I knew it,” Lisa says smiling, which makes Heather’s tense demeanor lessen slightly, thaw more into a warmer face. “Who is he? Is it Richard?”

“The thing with Richard didn’t work out,” I say tying the end of that loose thread. How many threads can I keep up with before they figure everything out?

“Then who?” Heather chimes up, brushing a tight curl from her face.

I must have looked uneasy because Lisa slides to the edge of the wooden stool she sits on by the window and says, “You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to. But just know that we would very much like to know.”

Oh God, now she’s using my guilt against me. Clever Lisa.

“I don’t want to say anything yet, it was just one night…”

“One night? So you slept with him and now you’re developing feelings,” this coming from Heather.

“…I don’t know, I don’t really want to but I can’t…” I feel myself starting to open up, “I can’t explain it, I like him but I don’t think I should. He hasn’t exactly gone out of his way to see me again…”

“Oh, so he’s an asshole.” Lisa leans against the wall and crosses her arms over her chest.

“Well, not really, at least I don’t think so.” I find myself defending Henry, telling them that it’s not as bad as it sounds. I don’t miss the hilarity of the situation, but I keep talking to keep their prying at bay.

When they’ve finally had enough answers to their questions, they drop the matter and promise to keep it to themselves. We then talk about mundane campus gossip while I get ready, it getting closer to eight. Maybe Francis will forget about me. I find myself starting to hope for that when I realize that Henry will in fact be there.

Why did I agree to go? The thought not even dawning on me until now, moments before Francis was soon to arrive. Oh God, the churning in my stomach worsens and I pull out my stashed bottle of gin and take a swig.

“You alright?” Heather’s eyebrows are raised as she watches me screw the lid back on and put the bottle back where I got it.

“Yeah,” I rub my lips together, “just preparing for tonight,” I joke.

“If I had to spend an evening with those pompous, arrogant, classic Greek cult kids, I would need the whole bottle,” Heather says. I laugh it off as a joke, which I think it is a little, but I don’t miss the undertones of truth as she says it.

When I finish getting ready I just think about what’s to come. I think about seeing everyone again, all together under the same roof, and how it feels like we’re so close to it all being over yet so tantalizingly far away. Bunny’s body has to be found any day now, yet it feels like it will never end.

Even when his body is found and they get away with it, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get it off my chest. I’ll never be able to tell Lisa, Kim, or Heather, that I was acting so weird because it felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders and I wasn’t sleeping. To tell them that I didn’t want to push them away, that I didn’t want to act like I did and lie to them the way I did. That it was all because I was scared, I was scared and thought that I would go to jail because I keep this secret for them, for Henry. That the guy I was talking about was Henry and in the future when I’m sure it won’t work out, we can laugh at how hung up I was on a guy that I slept with once.

We won’t ever laugh about the absurdity of it all because they can never know, and, deep down, I don’t believe it to be absurd at all.

Pulling myself from the inner parts of my mind, a knock sounds at the door. Lisa and Heather keep talking as I walk over and open it to Richard and Francis.

I invite them in as I grab my coat and slide my shoes on. Heather and Lisa stop talking and look at the visitors. Heather’s gaze is all fire, judging them in such an obvious way, that I feel the need to cover her up. Lisa smiles at them and they exchange pleasantries.

I can’t help but feel deja vu at Francis and Richard at my door, ready to go to dinner. It feels strange how life seems to be repeating itself. Perhaps I’m going crazy.

“Thanks for picking us up, Francis.” I turn back to Heather and Lisa and give them a look that I hope signals my apologies and that we’ll talk later.

They gather their stuff as well, following us out of the room, and closing the door behind them.

“Have fun, Liz,” Lisa says, looking between the three of us as they both get up and follow us to the door.

“Thanks, I’ll catch you guys later,” I say as we turn to leave one way and they go the other.

When we get to Francis’s car, the top still down from earlier today, Richard volunteers to crawl to the back and offers me the passenger seat, to which I sit comfortably, wind blowing in my hair and on my face.

Francis asks, to my complete surprise, how Lisa and Heather are. I didn’t know he knew much outside of his group. I tell him they’re good, engaging in polite conversation that comes rather easily to Francis and me.

I ask them how classes are going, they answer and share a few jokes. Between the jokes, I don’t miss the weary look that glimmers on Francis’s face or the way Richard looks at the horizon as we drive, surely thinking hard about something.

I breathe in the fresh air as we get closer to the twins’ apartment, thinking about the dinner and how I’m going to get through it. I nearly laugh at the near deja vu I feel, wondering how I’m going to get through a dinner with people I don’t feel connected with and working specifically about the murderer of the group.

Funny how we all live such big lives yet the same circumstances seem to attach themselves to us and repeat, nearly making us go mad in the end.

We pull up to the building, Francis turns off the car as I get out and Richard crawls out behind me. We walk up to their floor and knock on the door. I try to reassure myself of the evening, nothing I haven’t gone through once before, and if anything, I am closer to these people even if I feel like I know them even less than I did before.

I can drink the night away, have decently good food, and possibly talk my way through the evening until Francis, Richard, and I can leave. To which I will go to sleep immediately, dreaming the evening away.

Richard knocks on the door and Camilla answers, looking pleasant in a large oversized sweater and rumpled hair.

“Hello darling, sorry we’re late,” Francis says as he walks in and kisses both of her cheeks in greeting while taking his coat off. Richard and I walk in behind him and are led into the living room.

Their apartment is cozy. Filled with antiques, old candles, old books, dead flowers in vases, even a typewriter in the corner, and to my surprise, doilies. Those kinds of large doilies that your grandmother had sitting on the back of chairs and on tables. I didn’t think anyone kept those around anymore.

“Charles and Henry are in the kitchen, Lizzy it’s a pleasure to see you again.” She gives me a tight-lipped smile, though I feel it’s more genuine than it looks.

“Thank you, you too,” I offer back.

I follow Francis and Richard into the kitchen and see Charles cooking something on a hotplate, quiet and solemn. It smells delicious, a butter herb smell fills the kitchen making my mouth water. Henry sits at a weathered, circular wooden table, taking a drink of what I assume to be whiskey of some kind.

When he sees me, a moment of surprise flashes in his eyes, but only for a moment before it’s hidden behind his mask again. When Charles turns around, he greets everyone with a rather loud voice which tells me he’s been drinking long before we got here.

“Lizzy, they didn’t tell me you were coming,” he comes up to me and kisses me on each cheek, the alcohol strong on his breath, confirming my suspicions.

“I hope you made enough food, Francis invited me this afternoon after my lecture,” I say kindly.

“Of course there’s enough food. Help yourself to anything you like.”

Francis, Henry, and Camilla are deep in conversation and Richard and Charles talk about something Julian said in class the other day.

I stand listening to Charles talk when I catch Camilla saying something to Henry and Francis. “It’s eerie, don’t you think,” Charles and Richard turn their attention to her, “how Julian keeps asking where Bunny is.”

I assume he’s been asking about Bunny’s whereabouts, obviously not privy to his murder.

“Gives me the creeps every time he mentions his name,” Francis says as he shakes his head, looking paler than usual. “He keeps asking if he’s ill or out of town and I just stay silent because I don’t know what to say.”

“His body will be found soon, then we only have to make it through the burial and it should be smooth sailing from there,” Henry says in cold calculation. God, how can he make it sound so impersonal and heartless?

“My God Henry,” Richard mumbles, awkwardly putting his hands in his pockets.

“I wish it all to be over as soon as possible,” Camilla says as she wraps her arms around herself.

“Dinner’s ready,” Charles says abruptly, changing the subject, taking the pan off of the hotplate, it’s some type of sauce I assume pairs with the meat. I’m not sure if Charles didn’t want to talk about the subject any longer because of its disturbing nature or if there were simply things he did not wish for my ears to hear. I still feel like such an outsider to this group and I believe them to still treat me like one.

When we’re sat around the wooden table, Richard is to my left, Francis to my right, Charles next to him, and Camilla next to Richard. Henry sits in front of me, looking me over with his frozen gaze.

I suddenly feel extremely self-conscious and an inexplicable need to go back to my dorm. What was I thinking in agreeing to this? As if I really wanted to see Henry after everything, despite my anger for him, I still lose all bravado when face to face with him.

I nearly laugh at the paralleled events. At the last dinner party, I was scared out of my mind and asking myself the same question, why was I here? Then I was scared because I was in unfamiliar territory with murders, but now. Now I suppose I’m one of them in a surface-level way. But now I’m scared because of my feelings that I refuse to admit to myself.

As we eat, we make casual, idle conversation, much like the type of conversation Francis and I engaged in while on the drive over. When I look around the table, I see the stress wearing on us all. Francis looks like he’s ready to jump out of his skin, Charles looks nearly ill, and Camilla looks all too calm that I know to be a defense. Richard is easily agitated, anger coming easily to him as I’ve seen when we’re together.

Henry is quiet. Though I suppose that’s never been out of the ordinary for him, or so I pick up from others.

As dinner passes, the food enjoyable and the conversation easy, I empty my glass of whiskey or bourbon, I’m not sure. Charles gave me the explanation of their differences but I didn’t listen much. I couldn’t focus when I’d catch Henry’s gaze on me.

I wanted to ask him why he insisted on pinning me with his stare, but I kept to myself unless talked to.

But, as I drank, I couldn’t help myself but let my mind wander to memories of us together. As I watched him speak, I thought of how his hands felt on my body. How his breath was hot on my neck and made the hairs rise all over my body. I thought of his mouth on mine, the sound he made when I ran my tongue along his lower lip.

I found myself staring when someone else was speaking and I was still fixed on him. The alcohol in my system making me dangerously bold. He would look at me as if knowing the thoughts that ran through my head which only made me want to keep looking at him more. But the coward I am, I looked away first.

After dinner, I think Richard left, slightly drunk saying that he wanted to walk back. I thought him crazy but was pulled into conversation with Francis and Charles before I could talk some sense into him. Eventually, Francis leaves, saying something about needing to go and find Richard, I thought he too drunk to drive but I said nothing.

Which, to my hilarious surprise, Henry remained the last one in the apartment aside from Charles and Camilla. He’s the only way back to campus unless I wanted to walk, which did sound nice. The twins’ apartment was getting too hot and fresh air sounded nice.

“Well,” I stand from the couch, trying to hide my tipsiness, “Francis was my ride so I better get to walking back. Maybe I’ll run into Richard,” I say laughing a little as I walk over to grab my coat.

“I’ll give you a ride, I should head home as well,” Henry says following me to grab his coat. I want to turn around and remark on my not needing a ride from him, but I stay quiet as Charles and Camilla see us out.

When the door to their apartment closes, leaving Henry and I alone in the hall, I walk away, saying “I don’t need a ride, I can walk,” before he has a chance to say anything first.

I don’t hear him move behind me for a moment, then the sound of his footsteps come behind me and we walk outside together, him only a step or two behind me. “Get in the car, Lizzy,” he says and has the audacity to sound exasperated.

I ignore him, my pride and my anger too great to let me speak to him. I go to walk by his car but he comes around and stands in my way, trapping me next to the door behind the passenger side.

“Get out of my way, please,” I say, looking up at him.

“Get in the car,” he repeats.

“Or what?” My pride turning sour in my mouth, slowly melting into an acidic anger.

“Please.” The way he says the word isn’t an ask, he doesn’t ask it with a lilt upwards at the end. He says it, tone going down, like a command. But as he says it, he leans down so that he’s inches from me.

“I shouldn’t do a damn thing for you Henry Winter. You know why?” His silence urges me to go on. “Because you-”

I’m abruptly silenced by his mouth. The anger I felt just a second ago dissipates as he kisses me hard and hungrily. I can’t even conjure a thought of sensibility as I grab the lapels of his jacket and pull him in closer.

Forgetting to breathe, lungs begging for air, I pull back. Sucking down precious oxygen as he looks at me.

He reaches around me and opens the car door to the passenger side. “Get in the car, Lizzy.”

Chapter Text

The car is silent. The type of silence where there’s so much to say, so much to voice out loud yet nothing comes out.

The way he kissed me nearly had me forgiving him and I don’t miss the part of me that wants to. The part that tells me I was being a silly, foolishly naive girl and this is the real world. The real world where people have things they have to face. But still, I can’t erase the hurt in his ignoring me.

The way he didn’t wait a single second before devouring me whole with just one kiss. One hungry sweep of his lips against mine and I was ready to fall back into him. I was ready to forgive and forget, completely omitting the anger that’s been building for days.

How he drives, shifting the gears as we travel down the road towards Hampden, eyes on the road, peering out through his steel-rimmed glasses. I watch his jaw tick as he thinks, he has a mind that perpetually works, even when he wishes it wouldn’t.

If only I could summon the courage or even the anger to speak the words I’ve wanted to say for days, the ones that bubble up in my chest but fade away with my courage. But instead, I just say quietly, “You didn’t have to give me a ride.”

“And make you walk all the way back to campus.”

“Richard is doing it. I could have caught up with him and walked together.”

A tick in his jaw, “I prefer to take you back myself.” I don’t have a reply, I just turn my head to look out the window to my right. The night is dark, but I see the stars peaking out behind clouds as they move through the sky. Henry speaks up, “I know you’re angry with me.”

A small, bitter laugh comes out. “Really, what gave you that idea?” I relish in the feeling of my anger surging once again, he makes my emotions a mess.

“I admit, the fault is mine. I should have come to see you after everything. But with the FBI questioning Charles and I, with the snow finally beginning to melt, the manhunts…” he takes a breath, “I got overwhelmed and needed some time.”

His admission makes my chest tighten. Was I truly being selfish in wishing him to drop everything just to talk to me? But, I’m still angry with him and I have no intention of hiding that. “I wish you would have at least talked to me.”

“I know. I-”

“I wasn’t joking when I told you how scared I am that I think of you more than you think of me. And I know you discounted it and assured me that wasn’t the case, but that’s how I’ve felt this past week, Henry. I know you have your hands full, I’m still terrified that something will happen to you, to any of you, but…” I’m not sure of the conclusion I’m bringing my rant to, I feel like my mouth is moving and my brain is catching up. “I just felt so stupid after, like some dumb girl that got her feelings hurt. But this isn’t even about us sleeping together. Everything that is going on is more than anyone should have to endure and it’s weighing on me, on all of us. The others look so beat up and tormented by all of this. I’ve even been lying to my friends for you guys for a while now.”

I shake my head. I’m simply voicing all of my jumbled thoughts aloud and I know they make no sense, but it feels good to get something off my chest.

“I just want it to be over. To go back to normal, but I don’t think I even know what normal is anymore. This is going to haunt me forever and I don’t think there’s anything I can do about it.” I look over at him as I say this. His eyes are so focused on the road but I think his mind is elsewhere.

A minute or two pass by in silence. I can hear his mind working, his thoughts racing, but I can’t hear them, I can’t see them. I can’t possibly know what’s going through his head and that scares me.

“Even now, you have nothing to say.” It comes out more bitter than I intend, I feel the tension rising in the car.

“What do you wish me to say? I’ve told you everything, Lizzy.”

“Everything?” I pause, knowing this is a very thin line to toe, especially with someone like Henry. I don’t know his reaction, I don’t know what he’ll say, and I’m scared as I ask, “Why did you kill Bunny?”

“You really want to know?” His voice is calm, low, and quiet. I’m not sure why but I feel the urge to cry.

“Yes,” I whisper into the space between us.

He slows the car to a stop off the side of the road. We’re about three to four miles from campus and I’m suddenly very aware of our surroundings. How alone we are, in his car, off of a road that isn’t particularly busy. I shift in my seat as if suddenly aware that I’m with a murderer, that I’ve slept with a murderer.

“Last term…” he pauses to gather his thoughts, “Francis, Camilla, Charles, Bunny, and I were…testing a theory.”

“What theory?” I turn to face him, leaning gently on the door behind me.

“Are you familiar with what a bacchanal is?” He looks at my face, studying the features as he asks me this. As a fan of classic literature, I’ve read of bacchanals a few times.

“Yes,” I say suspiciously.

“Well, we had one. The inspiration rose from class, Julian was talking about telestic madness, bakcheia, a Dionysian frenzy of sorts.”

I school my features into neutrality but I’m weary of where this is going. When I don’t say anything and continue to look him in the eyes, he continues. “We fasted, we performed rituals, we,” at this point he turns away and looks far off, reminiscing in memories of the event, “we found the point to which we were no longer ourselves. We successfully entered into the Dionysian frenzy and we…we reveled.” The way he speaks sounds to me like adoration. Like he’s reliving his most favorite, prized memory. I don’t miss the smile that wants to creep its way into his lips.

My stomach twists in uncertainty. “Henry, I-”

“Bunny wasn’t as optimistic about it working as the rest of us were,” he continues on. “When we were fasting, we caught him cheating. We decided to carry on without him, just the twins, Francis, and I.” He takes a breath and turns back to me. “When it worked, when we were in our…stupor…something happened.”

I can’t fathom an expression, I can’t even think of words to form as he tells me all of this. I don’t even think I’m properly processing anything of what he’s saying. This is ridiculous. This is also, however, exactly what I imagined happens within the Greek cult on campus. Before I met any of them, I imagined these sorts of things. Nevertheless, I wait for him to laugh and tell me how he’s joking, how he would never be crazy enough to attempt this.

“What happened?” Still unsure of the best course of action as to how to react.

“We didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. I mean we were out of our minds that night. Wearing bedsheets and not much else, in the freezing cold.” He looks down, “We killed a man that night.”

I sit and blink at him. I don’t even move, I have no words to speak. I feel my mouth part, as if my body wants to say something but my mind cannot possibly comprehend.

“We didn’t know it was a man, we all saw something different but…nonetheless, the farmer was dead and we could only run. We were a mess, covered in blood, we weren’t even sure what of it was the farmer’s and what of it was ours. We were torn up from running through the brush and getting cuts and scratches, I even had blood on my glasses. So we left, headed for my place, only for Bunny to be there, asleep, waiting for me, dripping melted ice cream all over my chair and the Oriental rug I liked.”

Oh, I see. It’s all snapping together in place now. They stumbled upon Bunny who saw something he shouldn’t have, perhaps caught them in a lie to which Henry would go to whatever means to keep it as such, a secret.

I remember seeing a newspaper clipping about a farmer who was found dead on his land. A chill sweeps up my spine as I realize Henry hasn’t only killed one person, but two. He has more blood on his hands than I thought. It was bad enough that I was developing these feelings for someone who killed his friend, who killed Bunny, but who apparently has killed another person too.

Henry continues, “We told Bunny that we hit a deer. Which, after a little while, he figured out was a lie and came to face the full truth. To be honest, I’m not sure if Bunny was more shocked at us killing a man or that we left him out.” A harsh laugh escapes his mouth as I sit and watch and listen to everything he says. “He was getting blatantly obvious, pushing us each nearly to our breaking point to which we developed the plan. The plan that you stumbled upon and witnessed yourself.” The near-admiration winks out of his voice at the mention of my stumbling upon them and their plan.

It’s sometimes jarring to think of other people in your life having a past that you weren’t privy to. All of this happening while I was partying and going to classes with Lisa, Kim, and Heather. I nearly laugh, an almost mindless reaction, my brain can’t process the information and resorts to humor to cope.

But instead of laughing, I don’t break eye contact with Henry as I ask, “What did it feel like?”

He’s caught off guard by the question. “What did what feel like?”

Of all the questions to ask, anything relating to the bacchanal itself, or even to the plan they had in place to silence Bunny, this was the only thing on my mind. So I specified, “Killing someone. Or I suppose multiple someones.”

He just looks at me. A look I imagine only a few people have seen, nearly masking nothing on his face, his eyes speaking a thousand words, “I know how it sounds,” he begins, “but I don’t go around killing people for fun, I didn’t particularly enjoy it.” His tone is slightly sharp.

I wait for him to answer my question. Pinning him with a stare until he speaks again. “I’m not sure how I felt. I can’t very well use the farmer to gauge it, I was out of my mind. Bunny though…I knew if I did it, then it would be much easier to get away with it. I did what was necessary.”

I blink at him, my brain still unable to process everything. I want to ask him if he feels any semblance of guilt but I’m scared of the answer. In the very short time I’ve known Henry, he doesn’t seem the type to have the most developed skills of empathy, which is why I keep the question to myself.

“Henry, why did you tell me this?”

“You asked me why we killed him. I answered.”

“How do you know I won’t run to the first person I see to tell them what you’ve just told me?”

“You didn’t the first time.”

The first time. Right. I suppose that’s why we’re in this mess. “Why didn’t you kill me? I mean, that’s why you killed him, Bunny. You killed him because he knew about something incriminating. Wouldn’t that give you reason to have killed me too?”

Henry leans in close, his face close to mine, looking me in the eyes. I can smell the smoke on his clothes, the hint of earth that I’ve attributed to being his smell. “I thought about it, but…” he brings up a hand and brushes a stray piece of hair away from my face and behind my ear. “I didn’t want to, I couldn’t. I knew you wouldn’t tell anyone.”

My breathing picks up pace, nervous at how close he is but simultaneously wanting him to close the distance. I tilt my head to the side, eyes trailing down his face, down his neck, my heart beating wildly in my chest. God, what is this feeling? Why is it that whenever I’m with him, my feelings and emotions go crazy? I feel like through all of this, my mind has permanently altered, evolved to survive. Everything I’ve seen and done, my mind has had no choice but to change and adapt.

So now, I look at him, Henry, right in front of me. He just told me he’s killed two people and all I can think about is the taste of his lips and his hands, God his hands.

His eyes travel down to my mouth and I think for a second, that he’s going to kiss me. But he doesn’t. His eyes just come back up to meet mine and I can see the longing in them. The longing and the relief of telling me everything he has. I have no doubt that the longing is reflected back to him in my own eyes.

God, he just told me he’s killed another person and I’m…craving…this man. But…I believe him when he says that he didn’t enjoy killing. I believe that he did what he thought was necessary to keep himself and those around him protected, as fucked up as that sounds.

I wait for him to kiss me, in silence, looking at each other. His thumb occasionally brushing my cheek or tracing the outline of my ear, sliding over my bottom lip. But then I realize, he’s waiting for me to make the first move.

He told me something that only a small handful of people know and he might actually be nervous about how I respond. The angry side of me wants to make him wait, wants to make him think for a moment that I might not accept what he said. But I’m far too impatient for that.

I lean in, rather abruptly, and kiss him hard. As if anticipating it, he falls immediately in line and kisses me back. He nearly pulls me over the middle consul that separates us, pulling me closer, kissing me like this will be the last time.

I was wrong before in thinking us having sex had laid ourselves bare for one another. Now I see that it wasn’t until just now, that Henry showed me a part of himself that not very many people see. He laid himself bare for me in this car, on this night, for me to be the judge of whether to stay or go.

He knew, no matter what, I wouldn’t tell what I saw or heard, but he let me decide to stay with him or leave him alone in this car. That’s not something I’ll forget.

My hands tangle in his hair and I let out a breathy moan that travels onto his lips. I want to slide over to him, to straddle him, to ride him until the car shakes. I want to be closer to him, I want to be irreversibly his.

Abruptly, he pulls his mouth from mine, shifts the car into gear, and drives. I’m sat in my seat and silent as he starts to drive again. I watch him, unable to keep my hands to myself. I reach over and grab his belt buckle. He jerks and the car swerves a little, to which he recovers quickly, and asks what I’m doing as I unbutton his pants.

“Lizzy…” he pants as my hand brushes his cock, stiff in his pants. “What are you…” he moans as I pull him free and stroke him as he drives. His eyes are wide and his mouth open as he tries to breathe and remain calm.

I lean over the middle consul and swirl my tongue around his tip. The sound escaping him is enough to make my thighs clench. I feel his powerful legs move under me as he drives, I push my mouth over him until no more can fit.

“Fuck,” he says under his breath, “Lizzy…” I love the way he says my name. He twitches in my mouth as I move my head up and down, using my hand to help get what little I can’t fit.

Sucking my cheeks in, creating a suction that’s driving him near crazy, restless underneath me, he continues to drive. One hand on the wheel and the other on the back of my head, holding my hair back so that he can watch when he takes his eyes from the road.

I turn my head and look up at him as I move my head, humming in satisfaction when I see his eyebrows knit together and his eyes dark with desire. He reaches around me and shifts into a higher gear, going faster towards campus, towards my room.

“Lizzy, if you keep…” a moan, “If you keep doing that, I’m going to…” another moan. “Lizzy,” he pleads, but his voice is low, gravelly, and I can’t help but want him even more.

I feel the car come to a halt, the street lights in the parking lot are bright as I keep moving. Now both of his hands rest on my head as he looks around, ensuring that no one can see.

I feel him move up into my mouth, he moves one hand to his steering wheel, panting, moaning. He’s close and, as much as I want him to finish here, in his car, in my mouth, I know I’ll want him more when we get to my room.

So, with a satisfying pop, I pull him from my mouth and look up at him.

“Tu mea omnia, vita, anima, amor meus.” He whispers as he kisses me, this time softly, taking his time. When he pulls away, he says in a tone that commands no argument, “Get inside,” motioning to my room.

I fix my hair and get out of the car. He adjusts himself before doing the same, closing the door, following me inside. When we walk through the door to the living area, he abruptly spins me putting my back against the wall, and kisses me. He presses his body to mine and I feel his stiff bulge at my belly.

As I run my fingers through his black hair, I drag my nails lightly over his scalp, pulling a savory sound from his chest. When he pulls back, he spins me back around so that I’m leading toward my room on the second floor.

We barrel into my room, not even bothering with the light, determining that the faint glow from an outside lamp is sufficient enough as we immediately lose our clothes, throwing them anywhere we can, away from us. His mouth is hot on mine as I help him rid himself of his shirt and pants.

He kicks the door closed and presses me against it as his mouth finds my neck. He leaves my nerves on fire as he kisses, licks, sucks at the flesh of my neck. I can’t even fathom a single thought as he works his way to my shoulder, down to my chest, teeth grazing a sensitive nipple, I gasp as he bites lightly.

This is nothing like our last time. The rush we felt then, to get rid of clothes, to taste and touch every inch, is nothing compared to now. He’s nearly naked, pressed against me and I feel like I want to be closer. Closer, closer, closer.

My hands reach around and feel the skin of his back, pulling him closer until there isn’t a minuscule piece of free space between our bodies. As he kisses my neck, my jaw, coming back up to my mouth, I let my hands touch every piece of him.

I push his underwear from him, pulling off mine as fast as possible, only to guide him to my entrance. He moans and pulls back an inch, a stupid tantalizingly far inch that I hate because it means his mouth is not on mine.

“Henry, if you don’t fuck me right now, I’ll lose any ounce of sanity I might have left,” I pant to him.

As if those are the words he was waiting to hear, he pushes up into me, all the way until I’m nearly lifted from the ground. I gasp at how full he makes me feel, the pressure so glorious that I wrap my legs around his waist to bring him closer to me. His mouth finds mine again, I moan onto his lips. He thrusts into me, moving all the way out before moving back in and I move my mouth from his and put my lips to his shoulder, muffling the cries of pleasure he pulls from me.

He fills me in the most perfect way possible, how could I ever feel like this with anyone else? I can only pray to whoever will listen that he feels the same way.

As he pushes into me, my body bangs against the door, causing a terribly loud thud that I’m sure people in the house have noticed. As if reading my mind, Henry pulls me from the door, legs still wrapped around him, and walks me to my bed.

I put my legs on the floor and pull him out of me. The emptiness I feel as I do drives me nearly crazy. I turn so that he’s pressed to my back as I bend over my bed, pushing back into him.

He wastes no time, pushing himself back into me, leaning over me so that he lays on top of my back as he moves his hips in a delightful rhythm. From this angle, it takes nearly no effort from him to hit the sweet, sweet spot inside. Filling my body with pleasure as he continues his brisk pace.

My body is limp beneath him, my face on the mattress as I moan his name, his hot breaths tickling my ear, while he whispers in Latin to me the same phrase he said in the car.

“Tu mea omnia,” he thrusts deep, “vita, anima,” another thrust, “amor mess.” He reaches around and cups my chin, pulling me up against him as he moves in me. He turns my head so that he can kiss me. His lips move slow in stark contrast to the way his hips bounce against me. His lips are taking their time, relishing in the moment, relishing in the taste. While his hips move quickly, unable to stay controlled, and refusing to wait any longer.

The pressure building and building and feeling so marvelous as the sound of our skin slapping against each other fills the room. I nearly see stars as he continues his relentless pace.

In this position, my back to his chest, standing upright against my bed, he reaches around, hands dragging over every hill and valley of my body, touching me. He finds my clit with rough fingers. The friction alone, even for only a second, is exactly what I need as I feel myself crest over the final wave.

I don’t try to keep quiet as I call out his name, as I moan lewdly and clench around him, riding through the wave of my orgasm. He grunts into the crook of my neck, thrusting sporadically into me. His hand snakes around and hangs loosely at my neck as he pushes a few more times before completely pulling out and I feel a warm liquid on my back.

Nearly delirious from the pure euphoria, I lay on my bed, face down, as he falls on top of me. Our breathing is synchronized and my legs still twitch from the ecstasy of my pleasure. After a moment of silence, of only our breathing filling the room, Henry gets up and walks over to my desk to grab a tissue.

I look back as he cleans my back and his stomach before pulling me up onto my bed with him.

He kisses my forehead, whispering something about staying with me this time. The words comfort me, spreading a warm, comfortable feeling within my chest as I wrap my naked body around his.

With my head on his chest, the both of us fighting sleep, I ask quietly, “The phrase you said, what does it mean?”

“What phrase?” I don’t have the energy to look up at him with a raised brow.

I know he’s simply playing at being coy, so I specify, “The one you said twice.”

“Oh that one,” he leans his head down to mine and whispers into my ear, “Tu mea omnia, vita, anima, amor meus?”

I nod, “yeah, what does it mean?”

My eyes are closed as he says the words to me. In a whisper where his lips graze the shell of my ear. My toes curl under the blanket as his deep voice says, “You are my everything, my life, my soul, my love.”

Those are the last words I remember before drifting heavily off to sleep.

—

I wake to a loud knocking on my door. I groan and turn over, rubbing at my eyes as it continues. When I open them, I find Henry shoving his pants on, throwing his button-up shirt on, not bothering with the buttons, leaving his chest exposed.

“Henry,” I hear in a loud whisper from the other side of the door. “Open the door.” I recognize the voice to belong to Francis.

The light from the hallway spills into my blue-lit room - the sun must be about to rise - as Henry answers. Francis storms in, face ashen, hands twitchy as he looks between us, I wrap myself in my sheet. I would’ve felt embarrassed at him catching us if it weren’t for his state.

“Francis, what is it? What’s going on?” Henry’s voice is deadly calm as if he already knows what Francis is about to say.

“They found the body. They found Bunny.” 

Chapter Text

The morning is warmer than it has been lately. The sky is cloudy and the day drizzly, as we stand outside with crowds of students, teachers, and townspeople gathered to get a glimpse as the ambulance’s lights flash. Camilla stands in a black rain jacket, zipped up to her chin and hood over her head, while Francis stands like a ghost, pale and skeletal with an umbrella overhead. The rest of us, rushing out too quickly, stand in the rain. 

My hair is soaked and a chill has crept its way up my spine, nearly setting my teeth to chatter. I can’t even conjure up memories of Henry and I last night, I can’t form a single thought besides, ‘oh God, what have they done. What have I done?’

It’s almost as if everything from that day on the hiking trails, that day I watched Bunny fall, up until now, was nothing but a bad dream. A bad dream that wakes you in the middle of the night, and while you’re still half-asleep, you convince yourself that the nightmare was real. That it was real and it will find you again and come to claim you. The nightmares that make your heart beat so wildly you can hear it in your ears, a cold, anxious feeling in your chest. 

That’s how it’s been. How it’s felt since the last time I saw Bunny that day. But now. 

Now. 

Now it feels…real. The nightmares are coming to fruition and it feels like realizing that it, in fact, was not a dream the whole time. The fears you had were real and they are very much alive and coming for you. 

I can’t bear to look at the others as Richard, Charles, and Henry stand around, none of us moving an inch as we watch. I suppose our shock could help us with looking the part of innocent friends finding a member of their group to be dead. 

Though when I do spare a look at Henry, his face is set in a stone mask, eyes hardly moving, hardly seeing. Rain slicks his glasses, surely making it nearly impossible to see. When I turn my head back to the scene in front of me, I let my arm brush against his and I swear I see his chest heave up as if he’s taking a breath for the first time in a while. 

I look through the crowds, most eager to see the body, morbid curiosity taking over. Some are whispering to their groups, speculating on whether it is Bunny or not. Some cry, as if they knew him well enough to warrant tears, though I suppose Bunny was well-liked enough throughout Hampden. I heard stories of what he was like before his death, how he had turned nasty towards the others, lashing out at Henry, the twins, Francis, even Richard. How he must have felt so cornered and betrayed for being left out of the bacchanal, despite his inability to remain steadfast in their attempts. It's so oddly contrasting to the Bunny I did know, just from passing and stories around campus. He was always pleasant to be around, or so I heard. People said he never met a stranger, and I find that easy enough to believe.

My thoughts halt, frozen in fear as I watch paramedics wheel a gurney towards the ambulance. A white sheet covers what is unmistakably a body. You could possibly delude yourself into thinking it’s not Bunny. That really Bunny is in his dorm, wondering what all the fuss is about, and really didn’t die that day. 

But I know better than to let myself fantasize about the time before his death. When it was normal and the campus was a bustle of students and parties and living life to the fullest while we’re young. Before we were burdened with blood on our hands, even for those of us who didn’t commit the crime ourselves. We have blood staining us nonetheless. 

Collectively, I think we all hold our breath as they wheel the gurney into the ambulance. I hear a sound from Camilla, or was it Francis - I’m not sure - as they spot a piece of the yellow rain jacket he was wearing that day, peaking out from under the white sheet. 

Frozen in time, it feels like everything is in slow motion. I swear, in this moment, I can see the individual rain droplets fall, hear the breathing and the beating of hearts around us as I watch the meticulous movements of the paramedics, lifting Bunny’s body into the ambulance. Doors shutting, it’s not until they drive off that time resumes to its steady, fast pace. 

We don’t dare move. Not right now, not when we come to the heavy, devilish revelation of what has happened. 

I suppose one's thoughts in moments of distress or shock don’t particularly make the most sense. Which is the only explanation I can come up with as to why my mind thinks back to Dostoevsky’s novel, Crime and Punishment, standing to bear an uncanny relationship with the proceedings of my life. 

How murder can be…a rain-slicked slope. How one deals with all they have done, how to quiet the mind, and how it can make you its slave. 

I can’t help but think so clearly, alarmingly clear, about a passage, underlined in my book in smudged blue ink. A part that resonates, that shakes me nearly to my core, and I can think of nothing else. 

‘And most of all you are a sinner because you destroyed yourself and betrayed yourself in vain.’

I can’t say I’ve had a fine affinity for religion, so the guilt of sin might mean something different to me than the old lady with a flowery dress and an obscene hat that is devoted to that Methodist church she’s been going to since she was a little girl. 

But I can’t help the chill that covers me like a blanket when I read that line. In the Christian manner of speaking, it's believed that we are all sinners, all of us imperfect in the eyes of the one true God. But yet He loves unconditionally. Even though I did not have that devout Christian upbringing, why does this seem to shake me so?

Have we destroyed and betrayed ourselves all for something in vain? Henry, with the blood of two people on his hands, the others, conspirators in the crimes. But was it all in vain?

I can’t help but feel so insignificant in this moment, as they drive away with Bunny’s body in tow, how little life means in the grand scheme of things, no matter what religion one believes. 

Whether we go to heaven or hell, or if we just drift off into nothingness, or even reincarnate into another life, does it all matter? Though I can't help but hope that I do not reincarnate back into another life on this earth, I cannot think of anything worse than repeating life on a dying planet full of so much hatred and violence.

Would I justify the hatred and violence as I seem to do in this lifetime? Does one have to justify the hatred and violence all around them just to prevent themselves from going insane with the inability to help those at large?

When most of the crowds are gone, I turn to look up at Henry. His eyes close, he takes a deep breath, looking shocked to others, but I know it’s relief on his face. Relief that his body was found and that this whole situation is approaching its finality. 

“Deus, animas nostras,” Francis mutters, making the others turn, breaking them of their trances. I wish I knew what he said, but I don’t try to commit it to memory or to ask Henry to translate; I let it go as we turn and walk to the commons. Camilla mutters something about needing a hot drink.

When we get inside, the drizzle has turned into a heavy downpour. The day is grey through the windows we sit near, the table we’re around is quiet as we nurse cheap coffee that tastes burnt in styrofoam cups. 

Even here, none of us dares to speak. I sit next to Henry, his towering frame a comfort to my side, Francis on the other side of me, and the twins across from us. Richard sits at the complete other side of the table from me and hasn’t even given me a single glance. 

I nearly jump from my chair at the unexpected feeling of Henry’s hand on my leg. The weight, after my heart returns to normal, is a pleasant feeling, calming and warming my thigh. I wrap my hand around his and hold it, without saying a word or making any other indication of the intimacy we’re sharing. 

I let a flicker of hope blossom in my chest as Henry keeps his hand in mine, sitting in my lap under the table. True to his word that he’d stay this time, that he truly was sorry for his actions, and that he meant it. But, I’m nearly jarred from my stupor when I look across the table to Richard, whose eyes are on mine.

Finally, he looks at me, and he pays me mind. I tilt my head to the side and scrunch my eyebrows in hopes of portraying the question ‘are you alright’ to him across the table in silence. I see no indication that he understands or that he even answers.

The only answer I seem to get is him looking away, taking a deep breath, and sipping at his coffee. I can't shake the feeling that he's upset, but surely it's all attributed to Bunny's body, which is halfway to the morgue by now.

—

Days go by, we continue to lay low, Henry and I seeing each other in passing, but not much else. He made it a point to talk with me after we left Commons the day they found Bunny’s body. He told me what he had to do and that he would talk to me later. 

I let him kiss me on my forehead and even allowed a smile to form on my lips as he departed. 

Since then, nothing exciting has happened on campus, though I suppose that’s a good thing. Aside from the lack of parties, the free counselor sessions provided by the school, and even assemblies about the safety of hiking alone, everything has been normal. I’ve rarely seen anything from the others, especially Richard.

I can’t help but feel like his avoidance of me is intentional. Although it’s not the same as the avoidance Henry showed me. This feels different. Personal. It doesn't feel as if it's related to Bunny at all now.

I don’t recall anything out of the ordinary that happened that Richard would be upset about. The dinner seemed to go smoothly, unless something happened on his walk back that turned him sour. 

I’ve tried to talk to him time and time again, but he seems to always busy himself and has even started hanging around Judy Poovey, though I know how annoyed by her he can get. 

The other day, I saw him and he actually talked to me, though his pupils were huge and he was acting differently, more relaxed than normal. I couldn’t tell if it was alcohol or something else he might have taken. Either way, I wouldn’t even think about judging him for taking something to numb the pain, to which he knows. 

But, before I have the chance to talk to him about whether or not he's doing alright, we're invited to Bunny's funeral. Not only the ceremony, but also to stay with the Corcoan's in their house in Connecticut. I can think of nothing more disturbing than meeting Bunny's family and staying with them through this time.

Not only have I been plagued with frustrations regarding Richard, but I still feel I haven’t truly processed the extent to which everything has happened. Bunny’s body was found. There will be a memorial and a burial, and now I’m in a car with Francis and Richard, driving to Connecticut for his funeral. 

I asked Francis and Richard, though Richard didn’t deign to answer, why I was invited. 

“I’m not sure, maybe Henry mentioned something,” Francis says. 

I try not to make a face at the mention of Henry extending his invitation to me for this. I like to think I would have enjoyed a quiet few days while everyone was here, but the more I think about it, the more I think that sounds like hell. 

So now, Richard, Francis, and I drive down the road, listening to the radio, when we pull in, I feel a sinking in my gut that could only be described as dread as we pull up to the modern house in a large suburb. 

The house is gaudy in my opinion, Francis not appealing much to it either, but we walk up to the front door and ring the doorbell.

We’re greeted by who I assume is Bunny’s father, terribly hysterical and nearly out of his mind, laughing one moment, sobbing into Francis the next. I slip away with Richard, meandering through the house, through crowds of people whom I assume to be family. If their similar resemblances don’t signify their relations, then the way they talk sure gives it away. 

Richard looks like he’s about to be sick, about to pass out where he stands, looking worse than I’ve ever seen him. 

“Are you alright?” I ask, tugging at his sleeve as we find a quiet part of the hall. 

“Fine,” he shakes his head and leans against the wall, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. 

“You looked like you were about t-”

“I’m fine.” He says again, snapping his eyes open and walking away, leaving me in the hall. I want to be angry with him, but all I feel is hurt - a sharp stabbing in my chest at his coldness. I would assume it relates to the current circumstances in which we find ourselves, but why is he acting like this? 

I walk into the kitchen, children running by, screaming as they go. I find Henry leaning against the counter, looking pale and unwell. I walk over and stand casually next to him, leaning against the counter to his left. 

“Henry, are you alright? You don’t look…” I trail off as he raises his head. 

“I’m fine,” a weak smile, I bristle slightly at the same words Richard spat at me moments ago. “It’s just my headaches. I don’t have any medicine,” He continues. I examine his face, he’s sweating and looks like he could keel over at just about any moment. I look around, everyone in the kitchen is occupied with something else. 

“Maybe you ought to lie down,” I say. 

Leaving him, I find Richard and ask him for help to find Henry something to ease his headache. Reluctantly, he follows, if only because he was trying to get out of talking to Bunny’s father. We find drugs, but none of them are anywhere near the caliber Henry needs. 

After returning nearly empty-handed, Richard and Cloke Rayburn talk for a little while. To which I notice later the two of them going up the stairs when no one is looking. I pay them no mind until Richard comes down with heavier medications for Henry, and probably himself. 

I talk with Camilla, who I figure out later is Mrs. Corcoran, Bunny’s mother. She seems all too well for someone learning of her child’s death, but I suppose we all cope in different ways. I, not being one to judge on coping mechanisms, convince Richard to give me whatever he’s got in his pockets. 

Handing me a small pink pill, I ask no questions as I swallow it and try to figure out how I’m going to get through the night and the funeral tomorrow. 

—

The rest of the time at the Corcoran’s was too bustling and busy for me to even process what happened. The funeral was pleasant from what I remember, except for the fact that Richard seemed ready to crawl out of his skin the entire time, and Henry wearing a stoic expression of severity as dirt fell from his hand into Bunny's grave.

Regardless, I'm more than happy to be done with it, and the feeling of imposing as an outside imposter at a funeral I had no right being at. It was all alarmingly cerebral.

I’m not sure how Henry managed to lift the casket; his face was so pale, and he looked downright ill.

‘And most of all you are a sinner because you destroyed yourself and betrayed yourself in vain.’

Not to mention the stifling feeling of sitting in an old church, under a large wooden cross at the center of the arch above a platform where the casket sits and the speakers give their farewells. It made me feel even more of a sinner than I already do, if that's even the proper term for what I felt.

I find myself wondering about whether Bunny’s soul is still in his body, or if he is in a place in the clouds among angels. Or perhaps below dwelling with the demons. Surely if there is a heaven, Bunny is there. At least, that’s what I tell myself to keep the chill away, to get me through the ceremony and the rest of that trip to Connecticut. 

The mingling afterwards was nearly as difficult to get through as the actual ceremony. Talking with people about how I knew Bunny. I frequently overshared when I shouldn’t have, blabbering on about things that didn’t matter in the slightest, to any poor soul that had ears. I never said anything dangerous; I just simply couldn’t stop from expressing my thoughts with nearly no filter. 

By the end, I was glad to get back into Hampden and close myself in my room for hours after, if only to detox myself from the entire endeavor. 

I feel as if the earlier days, after Bunny’s death but before his body was found, those moments were child’s play compared to how I feel now. As if seeing the body myself, with my own eyes, was confirmation enough that everything was in fact real. As if watching his body get lowered into the ground was the definite sign that all of this was no horrid nightmare, but simply the horrid nature of life. 

I was foolish to think that the nightmares would vanish with the burial of Bunny. 

But now, my dreams are no longer of me falling from cliffs or ledges. Now I'm choking on dirt as I get buried alive, feeling the pressing walls of mud and earth around me, making me claustrophobic as I get buried and forgotten, forcing me to wake in the dark hours of the night with loud gasps and a racing heart. Sometimes I try to dig my way out, I try to fight through to get back to the surface before the air runs out, before my lungs fill with dirt and worms and maggots. But I never make it out. I keep digging and digging and digging only to realize that I've been digging down and not up.

I wake with sharp gasps, breathing, drinking down air as I pull myself from the earthy scents of my dream. It’s in those moments that I wish for Henry to be here. To wrap an arm around me and whisper sweet things in my ear to make me forget the evil dregs of my dreams. But he’s not here tonight. Not as the rain beats on the window of my room, not as I switch my lamp on to prove to myself that I am above ground. 

I’ve been reading Crime and Punishment, even though I don’t think it a wise choice. The story is eerie and plagues my mind with crippling madness. 

I look back at the underlined words, ’It’s just as I thought! That’s the worst of all! Some stupid thing like that, some trivial detail, can ruin the whole scheme!’ I can’t help but feel like eyes are watching me from somewhere. I feel like an animal in a zoo, somehow someone is watching…

“Bunny?” I whisper into the dark. 

No response. But how could I think there would be one? Even though I would have liked to know if someone was watching, I’m comforted by the silence in which my question is answered.

—

The next day, the lingering effects of my nightmares still weigh me down; I sit with Francis on a wooden bench on campus. The sun is trying to peak through the clouds every now and then, and I found him sitting here enjoying a cigarette. 

He claimed to be waiting on Henry, and I offered to join him. 

He holds out his hand with the cigarette between his fingers for me to take. I smile and take a long drag, despite my prior efforts not to pick up smoking, before handing it back to him. 

“How’re you holding up?” I ask him as we sit in comfortable silence. 

“Oh, you know, quite well, not a grander day in history.”

The sarcasm isn’t lost on me as I chuckle. The chuckle turns into a laugh, to which Francis looks me over with outright concern on his features. I can hardly see his face through the squint of my eyes and the tears that come to them. I can’t seem to stop laughing loudly into the air at the hilarity of all of this, the sheer absurdity of everything. 

When I finally stop, I wipe my eyes, smile still on my face. I blame my lack of sleep, but I can’t find it in me to care. Francis looks at me like I’m some crazed lunatic that escaped their padded cell, but finally, when I think this silence might turn awkward, he starts laughing too. 

To be honest, I can’t tell if he’s laughing or crying at some moments, but I laugh with him nonetheless. We share his cigarette, we joke rather light-heartedly, and it feels for a moment that everything is normal. Perhaps this is what a normal day could have felt if Bunny’s death weren’t on our hands. 

When Henry arrives, he joins us, not having anywhere more pressing to be. We smoke and talk almost as if everything is normal. But maybe, hopefully, things are starting to look more normal. Though I don’t think any of us truly know or could ever understand what normal is, I think this suffocating sense of closure could get us close. 

Chapter Text

I bite the eraser end of my pencil as I keep my head angled down towards my book, my eyes flick up to examine a quiet Richard across from me. We’ve been in the library for nearly two hours now and he hasn’t hardly said a word to me. I can tell he’s agitated by something; his leg has been bouncing under the table and his eyes don’t track the words in his book. 

His eyes slide up to meet mine and I’m quick to avert my gaze back down to A Clockwork Orange, which we’re finishing up in class now as we get closer to preparing for the final at the end of the semester. The cold has finally broken and given way to a very wet spring, flowers have started to pop up, and tufts of green grass can be seen sprouting amidst the brown, dead remains from winter. 

I feel Richard’s gaze go back down to his book, and I’m left with inner turmoil that is making me nearly as fidgety as he is. I know the funeral was a lot, the dead weight of what they did pressed down hard on all of them, it pressed down hard on me because I somehow got myself tangled up in this sticky, spindly web. 

My nightmares haven’t receded since that day, since the funeral. I still gasp for air when I wake and realize that I’m not underground and dirt isn’t filling my lungs. Sometimes Henry is there to lull me back to sleep, and sometimes he isn’t - it’s the nights he is not there that are the hardest. 

But despite my nightmares, when I thought everything was going to return to normal, or as normal as it could get, Richard began acting differently. He’s quiet to me now, he’s jittery, he almost has this manic energy to him that wasn’t there before. He’s still hanging around Judy and her friends, which I know he does not care for them that much, so there has to be another reason as to why he's always around them. A reason that I found out when he showed up to my room high as a kite from some pills Judy’s friend had given him. 

I tried to talk to him that night, but when he came into my room, all he wanted to do was lie down and sleep, which I let him do on the floor. But even now, in the library, he’s nearly driving me crazy because he won’t talk to me. 

“Are you hungry?” I ask suddenly, closing my book and looking up. 

He looks up as if I’ve startled him slightly. “Sure,” is all he says. 

“Let's go to that pizza place, that one by the movie theatre.” I start packing my books up in my bag, and he finally does the same before we head out and begin walking to the restaurant. It’s not too far, but the walk is fairly uncomfortable in the silence that’s fallen between us. I want to ask him out right what his problem is, but I know he wouldn’t respond well to that, though the thought of aggravating him has some type of appeal. 

We go in and order, afterward sitting at a small, slightly greasy, plastic table with a checkered red and white, cheap tablecloth that has sauce stains on it. The silence is just as it was in the library and on the walk here, but it’s not until we get our pizza that I finally say something.

“Alright, you’ve been acting weird, what’s going on?” I don’t even bother taking a bite of my pizza and neither does he as he sits, leaning back in his chair, eyes fixed on the pool of grease on top of the pizza, pooling in a fat circle of pepperoni.

“What do you mean?” His voice is deadpan and his eyes stay glued to the pizza as if he is trying not to look anywhere else. 

“What do I mean? I mean you’ve been quiet lately, and jittery, and hanging around Judy Poovey and her friends when I know they annoy you. You come to my room high or drunk with no explanation, and you don’t talk to me anymore. What is that about?” 

He finally looks up at me and I can’t tell at all what he’s thinking, which is making this even more maddening. Finally, he says, “It's just everything going on.” 

I narrow my eyes at him and ignore the flare-up of annoyance in my chest that makes my face feel slightly warmer. I take a deep breath as I look down at my pizza. “I don’t think you’re being fully honest with me.” 

“Why shouldn’t I be affected after everything? I mean, the funeral was torture and watching them…” he looks away for a moment before looking back, “watching Bunny get lowered into the ground fucked me up.” 

I watch every minuscule detail as Richard picks at a piece of skin at the corner of his thumb. I watch the way his eyes stay focused on it as if it’s his lifeline. I watch the way his eye twitches slightly and the way he chews on the inside of his cheek. 

“Richard,” is all I say for him to look up at me and finally show me some emotion. But it’s not sadness or worry like I was expecting, it’s anger. “What’s really going on?” 

“I told you, it’s Bunny, it’s the funeral, it’s everything.”

“Everything,” I repeat, hoping to goad him into talking more. A young couple walks into the restaurant holding hands and goes up to the counter. My eyes track their movements before going back to Richard. 

“Everything, Lizzy.” He leans in, his voice is only a step above a whisper but it feels as if he’s shouting it at me. “Everything with Bunny, with the others, Julian has found out, did you know that?” 

My eyes widen in shock. “Julian knows?” 

“Julian knows. He found out and he left, leaving no trace of where he went or what he’s going to do. I was there; you should have seen the way he looked at Henry and I. It was as if we were madmen, and Henry tried to make him see that it was all because of him. He was the one who was going on and on about the Dionysian frenzy, the appeal of losing yourself fully. He’s the one who gave Henry the idea, even pushed him to try it. But he was gone by that night; we don’t know what’s going to happen to the classics department. We’re all freaking out, Charles is drunk every time he opens his eyes, Camilla has closed in on herself, Francis is as anxious as he’s always been, and Henry…” he looks up at me bitterly, “well, you should know how Henry is, shouldn’t you?”

My breath hitches at his words. “What? Why should I know how Henry is?” All of the other words Richard has said seem insignificant now that he’s mentioned Henry. 

He laughs bitterly and I, for a moment, don’t recognize the Richard in front of me. “No reason,” he leans back and runs his tongue along the inside of his cheek. I see his walls returning and I’m eager to keep them down. 

“Richard, what the hell are you going on about?” When I ask this, a group of kids walks in who look like they belong to a travel Baseball team. 

“I’m not hungry, we should probably go back to campus.” He stands from the table, leaving his untouched pizza and walks towards the door. My mind is reeling with the information he just shared and his comment about Henry. Does he know something about Henry and I? Henry would have told me if he told someone about us, but he didn’t. I suppose it isn’t absurd to think that he would tell someone and not tell me, but he wouldn’t do that right now of all times. 

I follow Richard outside and grab his arm, “Hey, are you going to talk to me or keep ignoring me until I go away? What do you mean Julian knows and he’s gone? What does that even mean?” 

“It means exactly what I said. He knows and now he’s gone.” He runs a disheveled hand through his hair and looks around. “I mean, I’m surprised Henry hasn’t told you that already.”

“Okay, what’s up with all of these Henry comments?” I try to feign ignorance, but I fear he sees right through me. 

“So you want to tell me whether you two are together or not? Because you looked pretty together to me that night after the dinner at the twins'.” His voice has taken on that bitter tone again and I have to take a step back to think through his words. The night of the twins' dinner…

I look up at Richard and he seems to see the minute it all dawns on me. The night Henry told me everything and we started things in the car and then outside…that was the night Richard walked home. We live in the same building…he must have seen us. I have no clue what to say and Richard seems to know that as he looks down at me. 

He laughs harshly as he looks up at the night sky that still has the final dregs of sunlight streaking the horizon. “How long were you going to keep flirting with me and leading me on before you finally told me that you weren’t interested?” 

“Richard…I-”

“What, Lizzy? What excuse do you have for me now?” Richard has never scared me the entire time I’ve known him. I know his temper can get the better of him, but he’s a fairly passive guy. But right now, the look he’s giving me is one of someone who is struggling under the weight of everything to the point of unpredictability. You can never trust their next move when they feel cornered and threatened. Is that how Richard feels now?

The weight of having blood on his hands, the weight of it spiraling out of his control, the weight of uncertainty with the classics department, and whether Julian is going to give them away. There's no way he could without incriminating himself, right? The professor who put these ideas into his students' heads. Henry would still be faced with the charges of murder, but I don't think Julian could get out of it cleanly. I shake my head to banish the thoughts and return to Richard in front of me.

“I wasn’t…trying to hide anything…I just…” I trail off, my mouth seems to keep moving despite the fact that I have no idea what I’m trying to say. Henry and I didn’t hide it, but we didn’t want to make it into anything until well after everything had blown over. 

He takes a step closer and I want to take a step back but I stand my ground and look up at him. “Can you honestly say that you never felt anything for me?” 

My eyebrows pinch together as I look up at him. All of the stress is making him act out like this - it has to be the stress. “Is that why you’re upset? Because you like me? Richard, I didn’t know how you felt about me; you never said anything!” I hate the words that tumble out because they aren’t fully true. I knew that he thought this way towards me, but I wasn’t sure if that was just my speculation or if that was truly how he felt. 

The time at the party when we danced on each other and his head was hanging in the crook of my neck and his body was glued to mine. How, at the dinner party at Henry’s, he had draped that arm over me and let me lean in on him, how I’d kissed him that night. 

“Don’t act like you didn’t know, you knew it, and you used me to get to Henry.” 

I feel tears prick my eyes, which I'm quick to blink away. “That’s not true!”

“Oh please, the night at Henry’s, how you would sit closer to me, put a hand on my thigh and then look at him. How you immediately spotted him out at that party when we were dancing; your eyes were on him the entire time. And the part that hurts is that you didn’t see that I noticed! You didn’t see how you killed me on the inside.” His voice has lost the bitter edge and almost turned into an earnest plea. 

“Richard-”

But he interrupts me, “You don’t know him, you don’t know Henry like I do. He’s not the one you want to be with; he’s not the one who would give you everything you deserve. He’s going to hurt you one day and you won’t have anyone to turn back to because Henry has a way of making people rely on him. I’ve watched it happen, I’ve experienced it happen myself! He’s playing his own twisted game where he gets to make the rules and tell everyone what to do.” His breathing is erratic as he looks around, trying to gather his thoughts. 

“I mean,” he swears under his breath, “do you even know what he put us through when the FBI was here, poking around? No, of course you don’t because he kept you at arm's distance when all of that was going on, didn’t he?” 

I don’t need to answer for him to understand that he’s right. That was when Henry had been avoiding me after our first time together. I don’t want to believe Richard’s words, but the sting in my chest still feels just as painful. “He had his reasons,” I finally say, quietly. 

“Yeah, his reasons were that he needed to be in control and didn’t have time to deal with you because he was trying not to go to jail.” Thankfully, Richard says this quietly, but it still sets me on edge as I think of the group of kids inside the restaurant with their families that I can hear through the door. 

Didn't have time to deal with you - those words form an aching pang in my gut.

“I mean, the part that makes me the most frustrated is that you can’t see that. You can’t see how he’s drawn you in and trapped you. That day you saw him, you saw us and what we did, he knew exactly what he needed to do to make sure you didn’t speak a word to anyone about what you saw.” 

I shake my head, “No, that’s not what happened.” I take one step back as if I’m trying to physically flee from the picture of Henry Richard is trying to paint. 

“Why can’t you open your eyes and see that, Lizzy?” Richard grabs my shoulders and shakes me gently. I gasp as I look up at him. 

“Richard, you’re scaring me,” I say quietly as I look up at him with wide eyes. I’ve never seen Richard like this, under this much stress and snapping like he is now. 

He lets go of me as if I’d burned him and runs a hand through his hair. “If you’re not going to listen to me, then fine, go be with him. Go run to him and tell him everything I said. But when he hurts you, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” His tone is sharp as he turns and walks off, back towards the direction of campus. 

“Richard!” I call out after him, but he doesn’t turn around. “Richard!” I call out again, but nothing. I just watch him walk off with tears in my eyes. I sit down on the sidewalk for a moment, not caring that the ground is wet, and I just breathe, replaying the words over and over. 

Is Richard right? Was this all part of Henry’s perfect scheme to get me not to talk, to draw me in and make me rely on him like he’s supposedly done with everyone else? 

I don’t know how long I wait there on the sidewalk but I finally get up and walk to the nearest payphone to make a call. In the stale, humid phone booth, I dial the number for Henry and wait for him to pick up. 

“Can you come get me?” I keep my voice normal as I ask, not in the mood to walk back to campus, especially in the dark. 

“Is everything alright?” His voice is just as I remember, and I can picture him standing in his living room with the phone to his ear, which makes me feel an overwhelming urge to cry. 

“Yeah, I just need…” to my dismay, a lump forms in my throat so big that I can’t speak around it without my voice coming out strangulated. “I just need a ride,” tears spill down my cheeks as I press a hand to my forehead and keep the phone to my ear. 

“Where are you?” He asks in a tone that suggests urgency. I tell him, and when I hang up, I walk out of the phone booth to sit on a nearby bench. I tuck my feet up and rest my arms on my knees; I physically cannot stop the tears from falling now. 

I can’t get the image of Richard out of my mind, the way he looked at me, how he looked so angry and tired and…hopeless? Was that what I saw? 

I don’t know where he went, but we didn’t end things on a good note and I’m worried. Worried that he might do something reckless and worried that…that he could be right. 

Dread pools low in my gut when I see a familiar white car speed up and pull up to the curb. He gets out and makes his way over to me with a serious expression on his face. He crouches down in front of me, careful to keep his weight off his bad leg, and looks up at me. 

“What’s the matter?” His eyes bore into mine, and I can nearly feel the emotional weight crush me from just his gaze alone. He looks up at me with a calmness that about takes my breath away, but somehow that calmness feels charged. 

The lump in my throat returns and I feel my face screw up as more tears come out. He sighs softly before standing and helping me up, guiding me to his car and helping me get inside. I hiccup between sobs as he makes his way around the car and gets in behind the wheel. 

It almost feels like weeks of pent-up tears come flowing out at this opportunity of emotional vulnerability. Once the dam doors open, it's hard to keep the water from rushing out.

Henry doesn’t press further, and he doesn’t say anything as he drives to his place. The radio is a welcome murmur in the car until we get inside and he sits me down with a glass of what smells like gin, on his couch, and he sits across from me as he lights a cigarette. 

“You don’t have to tell me what happened if you don’t want to,” he says around his cigarette. “But I do wish you would, so I might know how to help you.”

I look down at my glass. The tears had stopped when we got here, and I do feel as if I’ve relinquished that from my system, but I still allow Richard’s words to affect me. 

“I’m worried,” is all I say, without looking up to Henry. 

“Worried about what?” He hands me his cigarette and I take it, sucking in a drag before handing it back. I still want to cough when I smoke a cigarette, but the burn in my lungs is welcomed, and the pleasant, heady feeling I get after is what I enjoy the most. Henry takes the cigarette back and continues smoking it himself. 

“Richard and I talked. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he’s been acting different.” I finally look up at him and he’s gone nearly still. 

“Did he hurt you? What did he say?” 

In truth, he did sort of hurt me, but it’s nothing I want to bring up to Henry right now as he looks at me with such an intense gaze that I have to look away. I shake my head, “I’m just worried about him.” When Henry doesn’t say anything, I continue, “he told me that Julian knows, and he just left without so much as a trace.” I look back up and watch Henry’s expression harden. 

I continue, “I just don’t know what to do about Richard, I’ve never seen him so…agitated and almost…unpredictable.” I look down in my lap, “Sorry for freaking out and crying like that, I think I was just so caught off guard by Richard and…” I trail off because I don’t want to say it out loud, how I was freaked out by what he said about Henry. 

Even now, Henry doesn’t seem any different than the way I’d left him yesterday after we spent the day together here. 

“You don’t have to apologize for that,” he blows out the smoke from his nostrils as he looks at me. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m glad you called me to come pick you up.” His voice is calm, but I spot a slight rigidity in him after telling him about Richard.

I take a deep breath and hold out my fingers for him to put the cigarette in between. When he does, I take a deep lungful before handing it back. I cough once and force myself to hold the rest in. 

“What if we left town for a little while?” He says while holding in a lungful of smoke. 

“What? What about classes?” I can’t say that I’m not tempted by the offer the minute he made it. I’m eager to leave the monotony of my everyday life and to give Richard and me some separation for me to sort out my thoughts, but with classes still going on and the doubts that Richard has planted in me about Henry, I’m not sure. 

“We can speak to your teachers, tell them that you have to leave town for a family emergency, they’ll probably work with you to get you through the remainder of the semester. Besides, there won’t be much of a classic department with Julian gone now.”

I look at Henry for a silent moment, his blue gaze never leaving mine, even for a second. “I think I’d like that,” I finally say, deciding some space from Hampden and its campus might do me some good. 

Henry nods and grabs my hand gently, pressing a chaste kiss to my knuckles before standing. “I’ll get everything sorted and it’ll all be okay.” He says it so matter-of-factly, as if just by merely stating it, it will be so. It makes me smile slightly as I watch him get up and walk to the phone to make some calls.

That night, I stay with Henry, and as we lie in his bed, bodies against one another, I don’t seem to find sleep - Richard’s words still ringing in my skull. There’s a twisted feeling in my gut when I think about the way he left and how uncharacteristic it was. Worry fills me as I burrow deeper into the blankets and Henry’s arms and close my eyes, hoping to force sleep to find me, even if it brings nothing but tormenting nightmares.  

Chapter Text

Henry took me back to campus that evening when he first mentioned getting away from Hampden and even Vermont for a bit. I spoke with my professors and gave them some vague sob story about a family emergency that required me to leave school for the time being - some aunt that had gotten into a car accident and was on life support. In reality, my mother is not close with her sisters, and my father was an only child, but the professors needn’t know that.

Some professors believed me and catered to my every need, while others remained skeptical; those were the ones who truly tested my acting skills. I queued the tears like some low-grade actress who needed to land the role to pay her overdue rent on her New York studio apartment, pulling at their empathy in any way I could. Eventually, those tougher professors relented along with the others and I was able to finish everything in a week. Exams went by in a blur, and final projects were turned in without a second thought. 

Henry’s predictions about the classics department were fairly correct. Once Julian left, there wasn’t anyone who would fill his role, and therefore, the curriculum was preparing to disband after finishing out the semester. But he didn’t seem too bothered as he was planning everything for our time away, to which I didn’t know a single detail besides the day we were planning to leave. 

I was packing my bag in my room when a soft knock sounded, nearly too quiet for me to hear, but I heard it in the silence of my room anyway. When I opened the door, to my surprise, it was Richard on the other side. His angry face that loomed in my memory from that night at the pizza restaurant is now replaced with the softer side that I’m more familiar with, and it makes my heart ache to see. 

“Richard,” is all I say as to give nothing away so that he might not erect the walls back around himself like he did that night. 

“Can I come in?” 

I step to the side and let him come in, forgetting about my duffle bag on my bed with clothes lying around until Richard’s eyes land on it, and he freezes. 

“Traveling?” His eyes stick to my bag a moment before he turns to me. 

In a panic at seeing his walls begin to rise again, I rush to appease him. “Oh yeah, I already finished everything for the semester, so I’m packing up to leave early.” I paint a soft smile on my lips.

“Leave early? To go home?” 

It would be so much easier to lie, to nod my head and tell him the same story I told all of my professors about my beloved aunt, but the eyes that stare back into mine are so purely Richard that I can’t bring myself to lie. So I dance around the truth, “something like that. Just going on a trip.” 

“Where?” 

“Not sure.” 

“You’re not sure?” 

“Someone is planning it for me.” 

“Who?” 

I knew he was going to ask this. It feels as if I’m on trial with all of his questions, and I fear that I’ll tangle myself into a trap. However, it appears that in my silence, he seems to understand the situation. 

“You’re going with him?” His tone lowers slightly and I look up at him to see that same Richard from the other night returning. I feel as if he’s sand, sliding between my fingers and out of my control. I can’t keep the old Richard I knew before everything escalated so out of control, the Richard before he seemed to change and snap into this new, harsher, colder man before me. 

“Richard…”

“Did you not hear me the other night? Everything he did was just to stay in control and to force our hands. Why didn’t you listen?” 

“It’s not…I haven’t forgotten what you said-“

“Then why are you going with him?” He cuts me off with a slightly louder voice, and it’s effective in its design to render me silent. I know there isn’t anything I can say to appease him, even though I wish I could, so I choose to say nothing at all. “Lizzy, you can’t go with him. You can’t trust him; he’s going to manipulate you as he did all of us.” He grabs my elbow, “You have to listen to me, you cannot trust him.” 

“Richard, it’s already been decided. I just need to get away for a little while to think through everything. I need space, I need time to figure everything out.”

“Time and space with him. You can’t figure things out when he’s by your side every day, manipulating you and making you think he’s in love with you. He could kill you, he could frame you for everything that happened. He’s going to break your heart, Lizzy.” 

I blink back tears and look away from Richard’s face despite his hand still gripping my elbow. “Thank you for stopping by, but I really should get back to packing.” 

“Lizzy,” he moves and cups my face with a look of earnest, “please listen to me. Don’t go to him, don’t leave with him. Stay, stay here with me.” The last words die in his throat and only come out as a whisper. I have no choice but to look into his eyes as he pleads with me to stay. 

I swallow the lump in my throat as I put my hands over his and slowly pull them from my face. “Richard, I can’t stay. Everything is enclosed so tightly around me, I’m suffocating.” 

His face contorts into something of pain and anger. “I’ll make everything better, I’ll keep you from suffocating, please…” 

“Richard…I’m sorry…” My own voice waivers as my chest pangs with what feels like a weight pressing down. I don’t wish to hurt him, but I can’t leave with him still begging me to stay. 

He pulls away from me sharply and walks to my door, freezing with his hand on the doorknob. “He’s going to hurt you,” his voice is just above a whisper, “I can’t let him hurt you.”

I’m at a loss for words and I don’t know what I can say to make him feel better. The energy around him feels heavy as he turns the knob and leaves without another word, slamming my door behind him. 

I eventually finish packing in silence, my mind reeling with Richard’s words and my heart feeling as if it’s made of lead, weighing me down. 

I can’t help but let his words sink in. Can I really trust Henry? But, then again, can I really trust Richard? This shift in his personality is worrisome, almost as if the funeral made him snap and he’s beyond repair. He’s unpredictable and much different than the boy I met when I first moved into Monmouth House. 

I force myself to zip my bag, and when I walk downstairs, Henry is already waiting by his car, smoking a cigarette. He’s wearing casual black slacks with a smart, dark green sweater; his glasses are slightly askew, but when he sees me, he pushes them back up along the bridge of his nose. 

He meets me and takes my bag from my hand, pecking a soft kiss to my cheek, before guiding me to the car. He puts my bag in the back before settling in the driver's seat and eventually pulls out of the parking lot. 

“Where are we going?” I finally ask as we pull out onto the road. 

“For now, the Albemarle until we can catch our flight tomorrow.” He smirks slightly when he says this, making me feel a strange surge of emotion. How could what Richard said be true? The way he’s smiling now is not the smile of a master manipulator, of a murderer. 

He reaches over to me and clasps his hand in mine as he keeps his eyes on the road ahead. I squeeze his hand as I watch Hampden go by, and eventually, after a bit, we pull into the Albemarle. 

Henry carries both of our bags as we go in and check into our room. He guides us to our door and holds it open for me as I walk in. 

The Albemarle is nice, somewhere my parents might want to stay if they ever came here to visit, though that would probably never happen. 

I sit on the lone, queen-sized bed, and sigh as I shrug off my jacket. 

“Everything alright?” Henry asks as he pulls a couple of shirts from his bag to hang them in the closet. 

I think for a brief moment of telling him about Richard and everything he said. I want to tell him to gauge his reaction to see if I can tell if what Richard said has any sort of truth in it. But I don’t wish to spoil the trip before it’s even begun. 

Something Richard says still clangs around my mind with an echoing toll like a bell: You can’t figure things out when he’s by your side every day, manipulating you and making you think he’s in love with you. He could kill you, he could frame you for everything that happened. He’s going to break your heart, Lizzy.

What does he have planned for this trip? 

When I’ve realized I’ve been silent too long, I give him a small smile, “I’m just ready to be away so I can breathe again.” 

He looks at me, and for a moment, I’m worried he might not believe me. But all he does is offer me a smile as he bends down and kisses my forehead. “You’re going to love it. You’ll see where we’re going tomorrow when we get to the airport. I want it all to be a surprise.” 

When I watch Henry go back to hanging up his shirts, I can’t help but think of how he’s changed too. The Henry I knew before I grew close to him was cold and rather intimidating. He was someone I would have never spoken to of my own accord because he looked like an academic snob who enjoys making others feel less intelligent than he. 

But…getting to know him. Feeling that pull in my gut towards him anytime that we’re apart so strongly that it’s pushed us together and into each other’s arms, it’s made me learn a lot about him. How he’s none of those things I judged him so harshly about before, how he’s rather soft when he lets down his walls. He likes to garden, and he tells me about the books he’s read. His eyes light up when I ask him questions, and he’s someone who has never judged me for anything I’ve been or done. 

I feel so conflicted that I could pull my hair out. It’s as if Richard and Henry have flipped. Richard was so soft and warm, so inviting upon my first impression of him, but now he’s gotten cold and distant, angry and jagged. Everything I thought Henry was before I knew him. 

I stand from the bed, “I think I’m a little hungry, I might go downstairs to see what they have in the restaurant.” 

“Alright, do you want me to join you or would you like some alone time?” 

I can’t even decide on how to answer such a simple question. But it’s almost as if I don’t need to answer it as we hear the door open, both of our heads turning to the door to see a stumbling and incoherent Richard comes in. 

“Richard?” My voice is pure shock as I try to keep it down out of courtesy to those around us, but I’m baffled to see him here, now, in this state. 

“Richard, what are you doing here?” Henry’s tone is rather flat as he subconsciously steps slightly in front of me. 

“Francis told me youwouldbehere,” his speech is slurred and I can’t tell if it’s from alcohol or pills that he gets from Judy, but either way, my senses are on alert; something feels off, wrong. He stumbles slightly as he carefully kicks the door closed. 

“Richard, what’s going on?” I ask as I take a step out from behind Henry. 

“I toldyou not togowith him,” his voice is quiet, but when he looks at me, I can nearly feel the weight of his emotions, and it’s crushing. 

“Richard…” 

“Stop saying myname!” He runs his hands shakily through his hair as he doubles over and then stands back up. “I couldn’t letyou leave, I couldn’t letyou runaway withhim. He’s going to hurt you, Lizzy…” 

My body has started shaking, and I don’t know what to say as tears well up and fall down my cheeks. I clench my hands into fists to keep from reaching out to Henry or to Richard. What do I do?

“Richard, what are you on about?” Henry speaks up, which seems to infuriate Richard. 

“Shut the hellup, you bastard…I’m so goddamn sick and tired of you always bossingusaround!” Richard reaches into his jacket, and I gasp, nearly stumbling back onto the floor when he pulls a small revolver from his jacket and points it squarely at Henry. 

Henry freezes, but his face remains like stone as he looks down the barrel of the gun Richard has pointed right at his forehead. I want to jump out and pull Richard away, but my feet are rooted in place, and I don’t know how Richard is going to react. 

How did he get a gun? I know that's not his...

“Richard,” Henry says, low and level, and if I listen close enough, I can hear a slight tremor at the end of his voice that would be normally indistinguishable, but not now, not when my senses are so heightened and my body is shocking my system into survival mode. 

My father has owned guns for expensive hunting trips that he and his friends go on, but I’ve never seen one this close and handled by someone so volatile and unpredictable. And never aimed at someone I…care about so much. 

“Richard…please…” I whisper with wide, teary eyes, holding my hands up. 

He whirls and points the gun at me, and my mind goes blank; my instinct is to duck, to run, to crawl away from this and hope that it will all just disappear, but my body has locked itself in a trance of sorts and I can’t think, I can’t move…I can’t breathe. 

“You did thistome…” he whispers as a stray tear goes down his cheek. 

I don’t hardly have a moment to blink or even process his words when Henry, in a flash, tackles Richard to the ground. Henry is larger than Richard is and uses it to his advantage as they grapple to the ground. 

I gasp when they go down, and I feel my knees give out as I collapse to the floor. I slide back and away from them as they wrestle. Henry reaches for Richard’s wrist and twists it, which makes him seethe with anger and yelp in pain as he drops the gun, but Richard is quick to keep Henry away from the revolver as it lies just out of reach. 

I’m not sure what comes over me, but I crawl, scrambling towards the two wrestling, and I grab the gun and scurry away. It’s heavy in my hand, warm from where Richard held it, and I point it at the entangled pair on the floor. 

Richard’s face is red as he tries to overpower Henry, his lithe body giving him some advantage as Henry uses his brute strength to keep the upper hand. But Henry is on top of Richard, and I can’t tell whose limbs belong to whom as they remain intertwined. 

I’m shaking so severely, I can’t even seem to point the gun all that well, but my finger grazes over the metal of the trigger. 

I could shoot. I could shoot, and it would all be over. 

I could shoot Richard…the one who brought the gun, the boy that I no longer feel as if I know. He’s snapped, and I fear there is no returning him back to who he was. The warmth he always brought me, like a fresh Californian summer sun, all tan skin with faint freckles that warms my mind even in memory. 

No, no, I can’t shoot him because no matter what happens to him, he’s still that boy I met when I moved in. He’s the boy who would study with me, who brought me food when I was sick, and who was always there for me when I felt like an outsider amongst the Greek cult. 

The Greek cult led by Henry. I wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for him, right? I wouldn’t be in this headspace that makes me feel as if I haven’t had a breath of fresh air in weeks. I wouldn’t be in this situation, with a gun in my hand, if he didn’t drag me in and make me trust him. 

He manipulated me, as Richard says. He’s manipulated me and made me trust him, made me…made me fall in love with him so that I could never dream of exposing him and all that he’s done. He’s done unspeakable things. He’s murdered two people…he’s driven the others mad throughout this whole endeavor that he created.

But…no, I can’t forget those nights when his arms would be around me and his breath hot in the crook of my neck. I can’t forget the sweet words he would whisper to me in the early hours of the morning when there was nothing between our two bodies, all skin and whispered words. 

The way he protects me and doesn’t hide who he is around me. How he has never judged me for being who I am, how he’s planned an entire trip to give me a chance to get away for fresh air. 

But what if Richard is right? What if he’s doing all of this to entrap me even more, or worse…to kill me? How do I know what he has planned? I can’t read his mind. 

I want to hit myself over the head with all of these thoughts that I can’t control that swarm my mind like a pack of angry hornets. I want to pull my hair out and scream, I want to run away and never speak a word again. I want to be anywhere else. I want…I want…

My finger curls around the trigger. 

No…no! I can’t! Who am I to decide whether someone lives or dies?

In my internal dilemma, they both seem to realize the gun is no longer near them, and they look up from the floor to me as I point the gun between the two of them. 

I think I’m crying, I keep hiccuping, but I don’t know why. Everything is a little blurry, but I’m numb everywhere. I want to shoot, a sick, twisted part of me wants to shoot…but I can’t…I can’t…who would I shoot? How would I do it? How would I get away with this?

Is this how Henry felt when he cornered Bunny on the edge of the drop-off into the ravine? Did he feel this numbness? Did his mind race beyond restraint? Or was it easy for him?

He’s a murderer! I should shoot him, he’s killed people…

But I love him…do I love him?

I can’t shoot him. 

Should I?

“Lizzy…” I don’t know which one says my name. I shake my head repeatedly. 

“Just make it stop…make it stop…” Am I snapping? Like Richard? Is that what this feeling is?

I feel like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, in and out of his stupor of consciousness after killing Alyona and Lizaveta. Teetering on the brink of snapping into a psychological stupor and worried that I may never be the same, but I can't think of that now. I can't think of that, not when someone's life hangs in the balance, when I could pull this small, little trigger and someone would die.

One of them, I think Richard, lunges for me, for the gun in my hand, but gets tackled to the ground.

“Give me the gun, Lizzy!” 

I shake my head again. No…no no no no….

“Shoot him!” Who said that? 

Shoot him. Which one? 

I bite my tongue so hard I think I taste blood, the coppery tang snapping me back to the reality before me. I stare wide-eyed at the pair still wrestling before me. 

I aim the gun at him…

I have to do this, or it won’t stop. I think I said that out loud when I hear one of them say something back in a clipped, strained voice. 

I have to make it stop…

The feeling of pulling the trigger, I never thought it would feel that easy to move a small piece of metal back. The recoil of the gun reverberated through me, my ears ringing as I stumbled back and fell to the ground, dropping the gun immediately as I stare at what I’d done. 

I killed him.  

Chapter Text

That day, gunshot ringing in my ears, everything moving at a slow, clipped manner that made me dizzy, dizzy with the realization of what I’d done. My memories are chopped and rugged, skipping over details I know I should remember but can’t. 

But the memories that remain are ones I do not wish to recall. Like his face, paling in the light from the window that sat open, carrying a breeze into the room; the way his once pink lips turned ashen and frozen in a way that looked like he was about to tell me something that would make me smile. The way he lay so motionless on the floor, where I thought he might just be asleep despite his eyes being frozen open. 

Sometimes, against my better judgment, I remember how I crawled over to him, tears falling from my eyes, body trembling in shock and fear as I shook him. “Wake up, wake up…say something,” I repeated over and over again in a voice rough with tears. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I shouldn’t have…”

Sometimes in my dreams, he would turn his pale head and look up at me one last time, whispering something to me, cupping my face in his hand. But other times, he would stay dead, motionless and cold, looking over to the side at something I couldn’t see, his eyes frozen in time. 

It’s nightmares like this that make me not want to fall asleep on the dark, stormy nights where nightmares run free to pry into the minds of people. 

Even now, months later, I sit up in the small bed that I share, legs swung over the side and elbow resting on my thighs as I take deep breaths, having just emerged from a bad dream. In this dream, I was trying to crawl to his dead body, but the ground kept trying to swallow me, as if it were made of thick molasses - impossible to move in.

I brush my hair out of my face when I feel the bed shift and dip towards me as hands snake around to my stomach and a sleepy sigh sounds in my ear. 

“You alright?” He mumbles to me as he presses a soft kiss to the side of my neck. He smells like clean sheets and sleep. 

I take a breath myself as I lean back into his arms. “Yeah…bad dream.” 

“Again?” He rests his chin on my shoulder as he holds me back against his chest. “Do you keep dreaming about him?” 

I nod, “No matter what my dream is about, I always see his body every time.” I turn my head to face him. He’s already put his glasses on as he looks at me in the low light of our bedroom. “Is this what it felt like for you? After everything?” 

Henry regards me for a moment before looking down and kissing my shoulder tenderly. “Yes,” is all he says as he encloses me in a hug from behind. “They don’t really ever leave you, the faces of the dead.” He speaks the next words into my neck in a soft whisper that gives me a wave of goosebumps, “Mortui nos propter peccata quae commisimus vexabunt.” 

“What does that mean?” I ask in an equally soft voice as I sit back into him and look up into his eyes. 

“The dead will torment us because of the sins we have committed.” He rests his cheek on my head and has a distant look in his eyes. It’s the type of look that always makes me want to know what he’s thinking, what thoughts fill his head. His words clang through me, and I wish they didn’t leave a slightly cold feeling in my chest, but they do as I turn my head forward and look into the dark room.

If killing Richard means that I will be tormented by his soul for eternity, then so be it. I deserve that for everything I did to him. In the deepest darkness of the night, I can’t help but torment myself for everything, blaming myself for what happened, the guilt eating me alive. 

Even in our cozy house nestled in Wytham, surrounded by gardens and quiet countryside, the nightmares still find me. 

Henry’s modest trip that was planned before everything went so wrong had turned permanent. We sold our flights back and found a small limestone cottage, to which Henry was nearly ecstatic to learn that it was built in the 1600s. The Jacobean architecture, the original fireplace and windows still in good condition, and the quiet area close enough for Henry to take a train to Oxford when he would find myself longing for the world of academia, was perfect. The ideal place to leave everything behind and lead a quiet life away from everything Vermont did to us. 

Everything after the gunshot was absent from my memory, Henry later having to fill me in on the necessary details. I was so shocked after everything, I couldn’t even get a proper sentence out without stuttering or crying, which might have been for the best in order for Henry to do the talking. 

Richard’s death was ruled a suicide. As Henry explained to the cops that had shown up not long after, Richard came in and threatened to end his own life, to which Henry wrestled him for the gun, but was unsuccessful, as Richard eventually ended up pulling the trigger. 

The story was easy enough for the cops to believe, considering the drugs he seemed to be indulging in leading up to his death, as well as the people in his life, apart from us, who explained to the cops that he wasn’t acting like his usual self. 

Hampden, after the death of Bunny and now Richard, disbanded the literature department nearly immediately after Richard’s death. Charles and Camilla left to stay with some aunt back home in Massachusetts, and Francis went back to New York, who phones us from time to time. Kim and Heather moved to California, which, to my dismay, hurt like a sharp pang in my chest as California only ever reminds me of Richard. Lisa stayed in Vermont, finding her calling as an office secretary for a small, up-and-coming real estate company. It pains me that I hardly talk to them anymore, but Vermont changed me so much, I constantly feel this chasm between us now, and I don't know how to fix it.

But even now, in our little cottage, late at night, the light from the moon occasionally obstructed by looming gray clouds that promise rain in the morning, I feel that familiar surge of guilt rise up in like acid in my throat. 

“Hey,” Henry whispers into my ear before he kisses the side of my head. “You’re lost in thought again, aren’t you?” 

“Hmm?” I turn my head back to look at Henry. He gently uses his finger to tilt my head up and presses a sweet, soft kiss to my lips. 

“The guilt, it’s back, isn’t it?” He whispers against my lips. 

“It’s hard to keep it away,” I admit in a quiet voice that matches the tender feeling of his touch. “How do you? Keep it away?” 

He takes a soft breath and kisses my forehead. “It doesn’t really ever go away,” his voice is level and face is deadpan as he speaks to me, but I know him well enough to see the emotion not on his face but in his eyes. Even in the dim light, I can see the sheen of his eyes, the set of the cold blue behind his glasses. “You just have to learn to live with it. But,” he pauses and cups my cheek, “you’re not alone.” 

I close my eyes for a moment and let his words sink in. Words that I never really felt or heard growing up when I was upset, and even if I heard them, they wouldn’t have been from my parents. But hearing Henry say them now gives me an unexpected swell of emotion in my chest that I don’t know what to do with. 

I open my eyes and swallow the forming lump in my throat. “That means a lot.” I lean into his hand, “You have no idea,” I say with a small, almost sad, chuckle. 

He leans in and I close my eyes as he presses tender kisses to each of my eyelids. His breath is warm against my face, making me lean into him even more. “Thank you,” I whisper, “for everything.” 

“I would do it all again for you,” he whispers back, “Omnia pro te iterum atque iterum facerem.” 

I kiss him softly on the lips, my hands coming up and threading through the hair at the base of his head. He pulls me closer as I adjust and turn around to face him in his lap, kissing him again as he presses against me. I feel him lean back and I go down with him, lying on his chest and straddling his lap. 

He holds me and kisses me with earnest as I let my hands slide under his shirt, up along the bare skin of his stomach and chest. He hums in approval and kisses me deeper, matching my movements with his own. 

I’m eager to distract my mind from my bad dreams as I let my hand come down to the waistband of his old sweats and slide underneath. I cup him under his pants and feel his breath hitch as he pulls his lips away for a moment. 

I move my hand up and down as his breath comes in small pants. I kiss him as low moans vibrate through his chest. It doesn’t take him long to roll me onto my back and hover over me with flushed cheeks and hungry eyes. 

He dives into my neck, his former languid pace is now one with purpose as his hands rove over my body and his lips leave a trail up and down my neck. How he kisses me so tenderly yet with so much fervor that fills my chest with so much emotion that I fear I’ll explode. 

I whisper his name into the darkness of the room as he pushes my shorts down and kisses every part of me again and again and again…until my body is tingling with pleasure and the only thing that fills my mind is him. 

Everything he does and is consumes me and I’ve stopped fighting it. I’ve stopped putting up my walls to him; he’s shattered my defenses and infiltrated my mind with breathtaking intensity. 

Perhaps it’s because, in my deplorable act against Richard, I’ve gained the insight to see into Henry’s mind. How killing someone has given me a perspective that I’ve never contemplated before, and now I can use that to see how his mind works, bringing us closer yet, even though I hate myself to an insurmountable level when I think of Richard’s life being the cost to finally understanding Henry’s mind. 

But I feel safe in Henry’s arms when we lie there in the dark, legs tangled together under the blanket, my head on his chest, his skin warm against mine, the sound of his breathing lulling me back into sleep where he acts as my knight, defending me from the nightmares that persist against the walls of my defense. 

Morning eventually comes, offering bits of sun between gray clouds, a fresh breeze coming in through the open window in the bedroom. White gauze curtains blow in the breeze that comes in, carrying the smell of freshly turned earth and sweet grass. I lift myself from the bed and yawn as I stretch, still bare from last night as the blanket falls away from my body. 

I slowly stand and wrap the blanket from the bed around my shoulders and pad into the kitchen to make some tea. I watch the water come to a boil before pouring it into two mismatching mugs. I put the teabags in and pick up one of the mugs, slide my feet in some clogs by the door, and walk outside in my blanket. 

I see Henry crouched around a rosebush, dirt on his knees and thighs as he mulches the moist dirt around the roots of the bush; it must have rained early this morning. His white shirt is stained with brown dirt and green grass, a small V of sweat forming at the neck. I watch him silently, working the dirt, in his element. As much as I love seeing him with his nose in a book, the concentrated set of his eyebrows and jaw, I also love seeing him garden. 

His eyes lift and a small smile spreads on his lips. “Good morning,” he says, wiping his hands on his jeans and swiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm. I hold out the mug which he takes carefully. “Thank you.” 

I wrap the blanket tighter around myself as I watch him drink the tea, a small dirt smudge on his cheek. “I like seeing you like this,” he says as he wraps his arm around my shoulder and kisses me on the side of the head. He looks out over our large yard, far enough from the road that I have the luxury of walking around in nothing but a blanket. 

“Planting a rose bush?” I look at the small bush with blossoms beginning to poke through the leaves.

He looks down at me before looking over at the rose bush, humming a yes. He walks over and carefully snips a small rose bud that’s nearly about to blossom, pink petals poke up through the green leaves. He gently slides the short stem behind my ear and cups my cheek.

I look up at him and laugh quietly. 

“Pink suits you,” he says, looking at me with eyes ablaze with emotion - he seems so at peace here.

“You think so?”

He hums a yes again as I open my blanket and wrap it around him. He chuckles and hugs me closely, “Have I mentioned how much I love seeing you like this?” He says slyly. 

“I don’t think so, tell me again.” I tease as I look up at him. 

He leans down and lets his lips graze the shell of my ear, “I love,” he whispers, “seeing you,” his hands slide up my bare sides under the blanket, “like this.” I shiver at his words and his touch. 

He swiftly picks me up, and I wrap my bare legs around his waist and drape the blanket around the both of us. “You’re all dirty and sweaty,” I protest, but I don’t plan on letting go anytime soon. 

He chuckles and snuggles his sweaty head into the crook of my neck as I protest and push away from him, but he holds me tight. He smells sweaty and earthy and I act as if I want to get away but really, it smells so comforting to me. 

It’s moments like these that I almost can forget about everything in our past that has led us to this moment. I can almost forget about Bunny, about Richard, I can almost forget about the blood on not only my hands but Henry’s, too. The secrets we share and will take to our graves, the secrets we left behind in Vermont. 

Seeing him happy like this, in his element of fresh earth, old cottages, and books. A quiet life that brings a smile to his face, that makes me happy. 

He slowly starts walking to the house with me in his hands as he litters my neck with kisses. 

“But your roses,” I protest weakly as he continues to carry me into the house and sets me down on the kitchen counter. 

“The roses can wait,” he smirks as he kisses. 

I never would have pictured my life like it is now. Henry, with a dirt smudge on his cheek, kissing his way down my body and kneeling between my legs. The events that led me here so full of pain and torment that even the nightmares from those days still haunt me. But now, in this moment, I can’t seem to care. 

Maybe everything was supposed to happen for a reason? My life getting uprooted that day I stepped on a twig and watched Bunny fall from that drop-off. Going to the party with Richard and getting drunk and high, Henry walking me back to my room. The dinner and the first time Henry kissed me. 

The words Richard said towards the end of his life about how I couldn’t trust Henry still, every now and again, settle deep in my stomach like a stone. Sometimes I can’t sleep, my head filled with thoughts about the doubts that are shrinking but never seem to fully leave me alone, as I stare at his back in our bed, watching the pattern of his breathing. 

But every day, I feel closer and more comfortable to a normal, happy life when the guilt is alleviated from time to time. I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for Henry, who tells me nearly every day how happy he is, and I believe it when I see the smile on his lips when he’s on his hands and knees in the dirt of our garden or when he’s cooking me a meal and watches me taste the sauce off his finger. I believe truly that he’s happier here, too, despite the ghosts that haunt him as Richard does me. Maybe he also takes responsibility for Richard’s death, but we don’t talk about it unless it’s truly bothering me late at night, when it normally does in the form of nightmares. 

I look down at him between my legs, and I feel my chest swell along with something deeper as he kisses me towards the edge of ecstasy and pleasure. He looks up at me and a surge of adoration and love wraps me like a warm blanket - similar to the one that's now piled on the ground around to Henry's knees - and I can’t truly think of a place I would rather be as I lean back on the kitchen counter, back arched, my hand tangled in his hair as I cry out his name. 

What we did, how we got here, it’s something that will stay between us forever, it’s something that will be our little secret because it’s what brings us close and intertwines our souls. Our secrets have a way of binding us, and I wish for nothing apart from remaining here forever with him. 

Secreta nostra vim habent animae inter se inveniendi, sive in melius sive in peius.