Too much to believe, too much to deny, you fool me again to quiet my pride

[plaguedrat]

He'd stubbornly avoided the city's latest mischief. Any glimmer of glass or crystal had sent him walking in the opposite direction, determined not to get involved. Didn't want to see his future, didn't trust destiny or fate or any preconceived future.

But lately it seemed as though the damn things were following him. The more he walked away, the more Rat found the glinting spheres in his other directions. Apparently, they had a message for him.

"Fuck you," he muttered, even as scooped the stone into his palm.

Grey. Grey back but his rat tattoo nowhere to be seen. Grey who lounged by Curtis, exchanging lazy kisses with the devotion he used to think he would enjoy forever. Now he had no interest, no memory of Rat. All he wanted was Curtis.

Curtis pinning Grey to the bed with his good arm, forearm across his shoulder blades, marking him up with bites. Kisses. Fucking him.

Rat, unloved, alone.

Snarling, Rat threw the crystal aside. "It's not real."

Comments

[backward]

He'd shown her the picture before. The one of — of Grey, she reminded herself, having blocked him as well as she could from her mind. It wasn't that she felt a sense of ownership or possessiveness over those features or that smile. Far from it.

But seeing either always had a tendency of bringing those voices back, forcing Effy to pay attention to every passing sound no matter how small or subtle, down to the shifting of the wind.

She wasn't sure what they said now, as Effy had a glimpse of the image in Rat's stone, but they festered in the curve of her ear, whispering. Hissing. Something was amiss. She watched as the crystal sphere rolled towards her, settling by her feet.

"Why let something that isn't real upset you?" she asked, leaning down to pick up the object. "You know it's shit."

[plaguedrat]

"Because it could be real," he muttered, not expecting her to understand or even to want to. His Grey, her Freddie. Rat couldn't even blame her for wanting to stay a thousand miles away from him. It was the same courtesy he felt owed.

"He never told me. Couldn't have told me."

[backward]

"Love isn't exactly perfect, is it?" Effy murmured, her voice almost dull as she continued to stare down at the stone in her hand, watching it shift from image to image, still stuck for now on Rat's life. She wondered what it would show if it shifted in focus to her own. Whether or not it'd still be that face, paired with someone else, fixed in a different location.

Other than that, not much needed to change.

"So if it was real, would that make what you had with him mean any less?"

[plaguedrat]

"It would mean he wanted to fuck someone else. That maybe he already did..." Rat's voice closed up and he took his phone out of his pocket. It took all his strength not to hurl the stupid thing into the sidewalk until it smashed.

But even he knew he'd regret.

[backward]

"So what if he fucked someone else? More likely that the city's fucking with you, but... not like fucking someone else means that you love them," Effy said quietly, raking her fingers through her hair, remembering that moment when the world had stopped spinning and she could look at her life with alarming clarity. Remembering the very moment she realized she couldn't stay with Cook.

Remembering.

"And even if you do, the idea that we can only love one person is shit. That's not how it works. You can be in love and still fall in love with someone else," she added, her voice growing softer still.

[plaguedrat]

"He..." Rat pressed a hand to his chest where Grey had tattooed Rat's name. "We agreed. Just him. Just me..." And if he hadn't? If the boy he'd fallen in love with had been a lie.

"He wasn't...God damn it. He wasn't. That's not what we were."

[backward]

"Then don't let a fucking crystal ball change what you know," Effy suggested, arching a brow. She didn't know enough about either man to guess or assume what had happened. Frankly, she knew from experience that even those who seemed the most innocent could easily give into temptation.

But she also couldn't help but think that there was nothing to gain now from Rat assuming the worst. Nothing to gain from the doubt and suspicion.

And that made her hold her ground.

"Do you really want to be that person? Do you trust him or not? It's that simple."

[plaguedrat]

"You make it sound so damn easy," Rat said, smirking at her despite how painful the idea was. Just walk away from the possibilities and cherish Grey for who he'd been. Would it ever keep him from wondering?

"I trusted him completely. With my life. And now he's gone. If he comes back, he won't remember me...That's the worst part."

No matter what happened, he had lost Grey. He only had the memory.

[backward]

"Because it is that fucking easy. You have to cut through the bullshit," Effy said, her eyes suddenly clear and serious. She knew that there was an element to trust that was hard. She knew that sometimes, getting one's choice to align with one's actions was far from easy. But she also knew more than anything that the choice itself, a simple yes or no, a simple do you trust me or not, could be made plain. Binary.

Easy.

"Your mind's always going to come up with bullshit if you let it. But if you let all that tell you what to do, you'll never get anywhere," she added. "You'll get stuck with... yourself. So if you love him, love him. Even if you don't trust him, love him. And if he comes back and doesn't remember you, well, either you pull him back anyway, or you turn around and never let it happen again. Sometimes you don't have a choice. For this, you do."

[plaguedrat]

In that second, Rat decided he liked Effy. Quiet, smart, and standing herself on a razor blade like a point of pride. Maybe she was soft and young, but he thought she would have made it in the West District. Her world was yes or no, true or not true. He liked her strength.

"I trusted him completely. The Grey I knew, I loved him completely." Just the way she'd loved he Freddie. "I don't smoke, but I wish I could make an exception."

[backward]

Effy's gaze softened slightly as she continued to watch Rat, seeing something in his face change, though she couldn't exactly put a finger on what or why. Maybe she'd gotten through to him. Maybe he'd somehow arrived at a conclusion and revelation all on his own. Whatever it was, the steel returned to his gaze so that it no longer had to solely be weighing down hers.

She reached into her pocket. She didn't smoke as much anymore, didn't really see the reason, but the weight always felt comfortable in her pocket.

"You can," she said, arching a brow. "Like everything else. Choice is yours."

[plaguedrat]

"Sometimes that's all you have." Free will, the power to choose. The world tried to take all of that from before and then again and again, chipping away at his own agency and the dignity of the people around him.

"Then I've made my choice," he said. He'd chosen to hold on to the Grey he remembered and loved, not to let the world take that from him.