25

25
We take a walk after dinner—her idea. It’s a little chilly, so I give her my coat. It’s much too big for her, swallows her up.

Our fingers are intertwined, the streetlights and neon lights. Christmas decorations are up now, string lights making the street feel almost magical. 

And there she is twinkling in the light. Why am I drawn to her the way I am? It seems we’re kindred spirits somehow. Like in her eyes, I stare into the abyss and it stares back into me. 

“Thanks for your coat. Aren’t you cold though?”

I smile at her for her concern. I can see the lights reflected in her eyes. 

“I’m a big man. It keeps me warm.”

She chucked. “How tall are you? I’m pretty tall myself,”

“6’4. I sprung up like a weed one day. I was 13 and all of a sudden I towered over my class,” I chuckle. 

“Did you get these muscles in the army or did they come with the package?” She grins leaning against my arm.

“I think I’m predisposed to this kind of build—I’d always been stocky. But I did train.”

We walk a bit more in silence. We have no destination just going where the mood takes us. She’s slightly tipsy, so I keep a good hold on her.

“I’m 5’10 you know,” she puts her hand to her forehead and reaches up to me to measure our height difference.. “We’re face to face, see.”

“Did you forget you’re in 5 inch heels, Red?” I chuckle. “That’s why we’re face to face.”

She huffs. “Big man. But take away that height and what have you got? Great hair? A pretty face? A nice body? A nice voice, a way with words—”

“Someone really likes me,” I chuckle.

She stops and looks at me, in that way she does.

“Well, you asked me to love you. So I have to see what there is to love.”

My breathing hitches. “And…do you see anything?”

“Didn’t you hear the list?”

My heart is pounding in my ears so hard I can’t hear. She moves on, as if that were a normal thing to say, something that doesn’t make blood rush to your head. She keeps walking, somehow dragging me with her, our pinkies still wrapped around each other.

Red puts her finger between my brows, unfurrowing it. “Why the face?”

“You upend me in a way, I don’t like, Red. I keep trying to place what it is about you.”

She sways a little. “There’s no one like me. I told you didn’t I? I’m something different, a bit unknowable, even to myself. You like control.”

She really does have an eye for detail, doesn’t she? Stripping one of every pretense with those eyes, those dark eyes.

“So I like you because I can’t control you?”

“Something like that.”

Maybe she’s right. “That’s a constricting way to show affection, don’t you think?”

“Maybe. But I feel the same about you. We’re more alike than either of us care to admit, I think. Like two sides of the same abyss.”

I’m starting to think Red is not just a woman. I’m starting to think she’s a way of life. They say the weak minded flock to cults. The military, religion, something to erase the illusion—the burden of choice.

Is that what she is to me? Am I falling prey to a cult? 

“You say so many interesting things,” I murmur. “So many.”

“Then let’s talk more and more. Because of how…weird I am, people don’t talk to me much. Not after they know me. It’s nice. To talk to someone who’s weird like me.”

I would protest being called weird, but it’s true. 

“Yes. Let’s keep talking more and more, Red. I like that idea.”

We keep walking aimlessly. The car is long behind us. 

“A bench,” she wraps her arm around mine, pulling me toward it. “Let’s sit, my feet are killing me.”

She kicks off her heels, puts her feet in my lap. I cover them with my hands, so she doesn’t get sick.

“You’re such a gentleman, Big Guy. It’s so cute.”

I look away. “Well…I told you I wanted to be proper to you.”

“No one’s ever wanted to be proper to me before. Especially not after fucking me.”

We go quiet. She looks away, focusing on the lights.

“You deserve it,” I murmur. 

“How do you know?”

“I just do. You deserve it.”

We sit for a minute. She’s wrapped in my coat, her feet warming in my hands. The quiet is nice, warm between us, somehow blocking the winter air.

Then the silence is broken by her hum. From her nightmare. 

“Was it scary? The nightmare it’s from?”

Red’s humming comes to an abrupt halt. “It was. But I never forget the tune.”

She's moved by music. And it seems the most important song to her comes from a nightmare. I don’t know it means, but I feel in my chest that I understand.

That I relate.

“The worse moments make the best lessons,” she parrots back to me with a small, sad smile. 

“Yes. But they still hurt, those moments, Red. They still hurt.”

We sit with that. And then I start humming the tune. Music never mattered to me. It was something I couldn’t connect to, maybe because my soul was shattered long ago.

She joins me, and we hum it together. 

I didn’t realize how much it could fill me. I guess…I guess there’s still a soul inside me after all. It’s been buried, fractured.

But it can still hum this tune, at least. And to me, even if it’s a couple notes…it’s a goddamn symphony. 

I look over at her. How did she do that? How can I do that? And what am I going to do?

How am I going to leave her alone?

“Scarlet?”

She’s startled by her first name, her attention on me. “Hm?”

“You can’t change your mind anymore. I won’t let go now. My teeth are around your neck now. So you can’t move.”

I expect her to be scared. To be disgusted.

But she wriggles her toes under my hands. “Why would I move? It’s warm right now.”

My god, I believe my affection might be violence. And I don’t think I can stop it now. Affection is boiling over into something more. Something worse. 

“It’s getting late.” I murmur. “I should take you home.”

She nods, and stands. I take her shoes in my hands, and pick her up. 

“Kyro—!”

“It’s too cold for you to walk barefoot. You know I’m strong enough and I won’t let you say no, so just relax.”

She rests her head against my chest, hesitantly. Her hands gripping my shirt.

“You’re so soft. You don’t look like you’d be soft but you are. Like a teddy bear.”

It’s because I’m relaxed. If I were tense, I’d be rigid and so would my muscles. But she’s in my arms and I can’t help but soften. 

“No one says that to me,”

“No one sees you like this, do they?”

And I don’t answer that because I’m scared of the answer.