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[ailerons]

WELCOME TO THE SALTBURNT NETWORK

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 hangman

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[haggle]

( yeah, there it fucking is. the loophole, the fine print. it's a long, painful eclipse of a pause — drawn-out and delayed, staring until the words blur into a uniform black bruise. like that'll unjumble it, unfuck it, undo exactly what she thinks — must already know, deep down, with dread rotting cavities in her stomach lining — jake is implying.

it doesn't. the words stay the same. ani knows fatal disease when she's handed the page — the diagnosis doesn't disappear, either, no matter how small the sentences feel every time she re-reads them, tries to make sense of a scenario where jake doesn't come out soaring, untouchable adonis. stage four, no available cure for the incurable, when it's terminal fucking sacrifice. just the promise of waiting for someone to waste away on her again, and knowing she doesn't have the power to do a single fucking thing about it. except — watch the damage run its course, make peace with the grief of an inevitable, if it comes. when it comes. terminal sacrifice.

something in her brain spasms, anyway: that strange, nostalgic sense of loss before it's even gotten the chance to knock her down. finally, punched out so viciously quick the typing bubbles can't keep pace: )

the fuck is that supposed to mean?
fuck you
i'm not pre-planning your funeral

[ailerons]

I agree
You hate the Longhorns, Ani
A lack of blinding orange is not something a man can abide

[ Barely disguised affection, even over the wires. Pixels on a page. Not exactly dying if you can come back from it, he thinks. Not exactly something that comes hand in hand with a flag and a rifle detail. Like it's not the end of every worst case scenario for every man and woman who decides to fight gravity for country — crashing into the side of a mountain, being blown to pieces, surviving the eject and internal bleeding and broken bones only to freeze to death in a foreign sea. What had Parisa said? No sound, no people. Being temporarily dead's a seven outta ten. ]

I got asked who I wanted to watch over
Did consider Koby, since he is about 2 ft tall.

[ Bullshit for the sake of bullshit. That good ol' release valve. It's not like it would've ever been anyone else's name Jake said aloud.

At a clip: ]

Anybody come crawling out of the woodwork to ask you for a favor?

[haggle]

( go figure. hand jake seresin fear, and he'll make a balloon animal out of it — like twisting it into a new shape was ever going to make it easier for her to witness. except she's not fucking laughing. maybe that's just all there is to it. maybe what's world-defining tragedy for her is just regular tuesday for him — worst case scenario, the bottom line when a soldier suits up for service — but fuck if she isn't tired of it. men who promise a lifetime only to cut it short with a smile and a shrug, like she should have gotten the memo it was always going to go south on her, somewhere along the way.

she types, first: i hate you. some pointless tantrum. the kind that just makes her ribs feel too narrow to hold the swell of panic without cracking her open, without wringing her breath into sharper punctuations. just makes her think that's the exact poison a person regrets spitting once they're famous last words, too late to take back before lights out. forcing him to lie in a grave without knowing peace, for however long the dead stay dead.

her next draft's only a more colorful improvement on the first. it stays that way, for awhile. bubbles on a screen, fading then resurfacing. a familiar urge, ratcheted up to downed-wire intensity, to either kiss him or cut her fist on his stupid fucking jaw. for playing hero, for protecting her when no one else would stick their neck out. for quitting on her by fucking croaking, and all the ways he's just diminished the decision to choose her.

then, viciously silent: )

✔ READ

1/4 don't quote me

[ailerons]

[ Not the first time. Wouldn't be the last.

Five minutes. Give or take. Feels the pull of a smile that's too late to abort halfway through, even though the pain lances all the way down, the throb that aches all the way to the space behind his eyes. Not the kind of smile that comes because something's been won, or held, or laughed at, but the kind that makes Jake Seresin think: Yeah. Guess I deserve that. Sacrifice is selfish that way. Leaves the one you love whole, but only because you're not around to see what follows. Hangman, always leaving someone else out to dry.

Character flaw: he'd still do it anyway. Even before she was the one to cut him out of that chair and he'd thought—

Six minutes: ]

Are you reading up on the Longhorns right now?

2/4

[ailerons]

[ And, ]

You know, it is uncharitable to ignore a man who can barely open his mouth

3/4

[ailerons]

[ Later on: ]

I ever tell you about the bar in Pensacola?

4/4

[ailerons]

[ A lot to say, but not the hour to say it, given who they're trying to put into a cage. Jake Seresin, still bold enough to say, ]

You know I'll come back.

[haggle]

( you know. not exactly a promise, so much as laying it out like a flight map she should have memorized, by now — skies, storms, or seas, jake seresin finds a way to stay above ground. not exactly a promise, so much as the daring arrogance of men who've spent years rising above the world — pushing back against impossible odds, defying impossible physics, still coming out on top. what's a grave to jake, if not another challenge issued by gravity? how could she ever think something as mundane as six feet of dirt could hold him down, when the earth itself couldn't?

it's a comforting lie she won't let herself buy into. you know i'll come back. you know mortal shortcomings are for other men — human next to hercules, mettle and might that's made his immortal ego read like an unkillable myth. but she's lived through til death do you part before — didn't stop her from standing alone on the other side of it, waiting for someone who had already given up the ghost on her, long before she put the final nail in her hope. always, always, always the one waiting.

don't make me believe, she can't bring herself to write, that there's a chance any of this ends okay. )

keep telling yourself that, prince charming
maybe there won't be anything left for you to come back to
lucky you, huh? you won't have to stick around to see what happens