One thing Flippy had learned in the months since he and Flaky had first started living together was that she had the uncanny ability to get scars from pretty much anything. The porcelain skin that looked like cream over marble bled easy, cut easy, burned easy, healed slowly, and covered it all in a sinewy patch of white like a veil. From mosquito bites to paper cuts, they all left their marks.
Flippy had noticed this the first summer they spent together. It had been hot and humid outside and then drizzling and murky the next, but sometimes there came along a day with just the right amount of sun and just the right amount of breeze. It was days like these that Flaky went into the field behind the apartment complex with a shiny pair of scissors and her hair pulled back into a ponytail. Flippy would catch glances of her through the window over the kitchen sink when he walked by, laundry basket in tow, see her red hair and pale skin glowing. She was clumsy each time, always reaching for the wild roses without thinking first and quickly drawing back when the thorns pierced her fingers. There would be small spots of crimson left behind on the petals when she returned, which she would glare at mournfully once she'd placed them in a vase on the kitchen table, as if she'd ruined a masterpiece. It was one day when Flaky came back with her hand raised to her chest, fingers itching toward her lips, when Flippy decided to lightly place his hands over hers and lead her into the bathroom. He had taken out the box of band-aids and they had sat in silence as he gingerly wrapped them over the tips of her fingers, dusting off stray blades of grass from her wrists. Three days later when she took off the band-aids, he had been in awe of the individual white slits over each finger.
Now, months later, they sat on the floor, trying to stay warm in the winter weather and barely working heater. What had started out as a dinner of warmed up Chinese left-overs under a shared fleece blanket on the living room floor soon turned into a world of their own, just the two of them, in a crappy old apartment on the edge of town with creaky floors and rusty pipes. It certainly wasn't a luxury and some months they were lucky to afford rent, food, and college tuition on two jobs each with late shifts mixed in here and there, but there was an undeniable current of comfort that flowed in their faulty electricity and in the hum from the water heater under the sink. And in some moments between rushed mornings, kisses goodbye with lips warm from coffee, late nights of studying and a shared bottle of Advil during mid terms, they managed to find moments like these.
Now they sat together, laughter floating between them and mixing with hushed voices that were hushed for no reason other than to make sure only they could hear it.
"What's this one?"
"One time when I was 4, I cut my hand trying to open a package of water colors I found in my aunts basement," Flaky explained, blushing slightly.
"Seriously? Watercolors?"
"Hey I'm just as baffled as you are."
"What about this one?"
Flippy examined her arm and hand, turning her palm over and over until he found another new scar and pointed it out. How they had gotten on the subject of talking about scars was unknown to him; one minute they were sharing chopsticks and the next they were comparing stories about stupid accidents.
"Ah, that one I got when I was like 9. My mom and I were sewing a quilt for my grandma and I grabbed the scissors wrong I guess. There was a lot of blood and we had to start all over…She was not happy."
"That sucks."
"Hmm, I was never really good at sewing anyway."
They laughed and Flippy traded hands. His eyes widened when right off the bat he found a jagged line running from the crease of her arm to her elbow.
"How the—"
"Oh that one…"
"How even?"
"Okay, promise not to laugh?"
"No promises."
She shot him a look before continuing. "When I was…11 I think, I fell into a barbed wire fence at my grandpa's farm."
"Why would I laugh at that!"
"Because I was chasing after a bunny and right before I caught it I slipped and rolled down this big hill and arm-first into the fence."
"What is it with you and stray animals?"
"It's not like I'm a scary person! Why do they always run! I was going to be gentle!"
"If I was a bunny and saw a person twice my size chasing after me at full speed I would run too."
"You would run away from me!" Flaky's voice squeaked, hurt displayed on her face.
Flippy paused before frantically rephrasing.
"No, I take it back. I definitely wouldn't run."
"Yes you would!" She pouted, looking to the side and jutting out her lips.
"No I wouldn't. In fact I would hop over to you."
There was a pause before she faced him again, face twisting in laughter at the bunny impression on his face.
"Are you trying to wiggle your nose!"
"What? Am I not doing it right?"
"No!"
"How do you do it, then?"
Flippy watched as Flaky tried to stifle her giggling enough to focus, and then expertly twitched her nose back and forth. It was so cute Flippy felt a temporary lapse of judgment and he leaned forward to place a kiss on the tip of her nose. She gasped and covered her face, always so shy, and looked up at him from under her lashes. And God, sometimes Flippy was absolutely floored by how beautiful she was. With a laugh he went back to her arm.
"What about this one?"
It started getting dark outside before Flippy had the chance to notice, and by the time he did it was already so late it would be ridiculous to even go to bed. It was the weekend anyway, and he didn't feel like missing out on these moments they seemed to be having less and less. He swore, if his boss kept him late one more time he was going to quit. Though Flaky would indefinitely scold him for doing so if he did.
There wasn't enough time in the day, he'd decided long ago, and he felt it again as Flaky drew closer in the chilly night, the house always dropping a few degrees around this time.
All of her scars had been mapped out, the causes for ones on her legs more outrageous than the ones on her upper body, and she swore she had more on her stomach and back that she was definitely NOT going to show him. It made him chuckle sometimes, how modest she was at times. She had no problem sleeping in the same bed at night and sharing his clothes when hers were in the wash, but when she changed or got out of the shower she made sure Flippy was out of the room or couldn't see her. Indecency struck her at the weirdest times, and Flippy found it both odd and intriguing. Unlike what Splendid said, he didn't mind her carefully contained abstinence and the way blatant sexual advances made her blush too furiously to speak. Just because they weren't sleeping together didn't mean he couldn't feel close to her. He never understood the significance of sex in relationships anyway, but sometimes he figured he might just be different with an extremely low sex-drive.
His thoughts were abruptly cut off when he felt a chilled hand grasp his arm. When he looked down, Flaky was examining a red line that marred the skin on his forearm. He swallowed, not knowing how the attention had suddenly become focused on him and his scars, but immediately wishing it hadn't. Call it what you will, but Flippy felt a certain…embarrassment over the ugly lines that riddled his body. No, not exactly embarrassment, more like…disgust.
Flaky seemed fascinated as she trailed the red outline first with her eyes and then with a gentle, hesitant finger.
"Tell me the story," she said, "about this one?"
Her voice was too innocent and curious for Flippy to put up a retort, so he sighed and prayed she didn't keep examining. That she would stop before she reached the more…prominent ones.
"I uh…when I was around…8 or 9 I made the neighbor's pit bull mad and it bit me really hard."
She nodded in a silent condolence, and then pointed to one on his knuckles. It was small, a soft, scratchy pink.
"Um, I think that was from when me and Splendid were teenagers and we were playing knives. Except we used a pocket knife instead of an actual knife. Thank God. As you can see I wasn't very good at it."
"Stupid," Flaky muttered, giving him a glare similar to one a big sister gives her younger brother, but her face softened as she continued searching. Flippy felt his stomach drop when her eyes fell on his shoulder, and she pulled the sleeve of his T-shirt up a bit.
There was a grisly, twisted patch of skin, a lavender color with a blue vein running down the middle.
"…This one?"
Flippy suddenly felt he was a bit too sober for this kind of discussion.
"I…well…," he cleared his throat and scratched at his chin. "I got that one when…when I got shot."
You could hear a pin drop in the silence that followed, Flippy was sure. He was prepared for the usual questions, the usual gasps of horror or shock when he was asked if he was okay, how he had survived, if it had hurt… But Flaky let the sleeve slide back down and moved on. She scanned over his shoulder and then lightly turned him slightly to the left, placing her hand on the tip of a scar poking out from under the neck of his shirt. She folded back the fabric a bit before breathing out, "This?"
If Flippy had taken off his shirt and revealed the entirety of this particular one, he wasn't sure how she would react.
"Someone stabbed me. Ironic kind of. You know, getting stabbed in the back."
She hummed in mute agreement, patting the fold back down when she drew away.
"Where…Where do you have the…most of them?"
A pause.
"My chest and back. Mostly around my ribs."
A nod accompanying the pause.
"I want to see them."
It was normal. Or at least they pretended it was. The fact that Flippy had been to war, and fought and almost died, had suffered two years of untreated PTSD, had almost lost his life at his own hands. They didn't talk about it, never acknowledged it. It was there and then not. Normal life, no need to bring up something so obvious.
But sometimes, when it was mentioned offhand, or when he had the occasional nightmare that left him thrashing awake and calming down as Flaky held him in the aftermath, Flippy saw the shadow in Flaky's eyes. The slight fall in her face of inexplicable sadness. Of the inability to empathize with his pain and only be able to offer so much sympathy. The fact she couldn't rewrite some of the things that haunted his mind like she had rewritten everything else was what she dreaded the most. And as she sat at Flippy's side now, his shirt in his lap, clenched in his hands as he explained more of the scars, she had that look again.
"This one?"
Her hand was sprawled out under his left shoulder blade and Flippy thought back.
"Burn. Car explosion."
"And this?" The middle of his spine now.
"Where the doctors found most of the shrapnel. Got it out, thankfully."
"Here?" The crook of his back.
"Broke part of the bone. Protruded out of the skin for a couple days. It was pretty easy to hide under the uniform."
A sigh, and Flaky licked her lips in exasperation.
A display case at a museum. A memoir to the dead and all that was wrong in the world. The epitome of violence. That's what the scars made Flippy feel like.
Flaky scooted around to his other side, taking his arm.
She gently turned it sideways.
"Here?" His bicep.
"Bullet wound."
"Here?" A couple inches below it.
"Another bullet wound. They uh…had horrible aim."
He lost track of his thoughts as he remembered back to the look on the soldier's face who had aimed for his heart, and missed. Twice.
"Flippy."
He looked down, and Flaky's fingers were placed over his wrist. Each finger touched a separate, symmetrical line. Thin and maroon, they once were open and bright red, now closed and sealed. As they traveled up his arm the lines became less organized, and became crooked, almost perpendicular.
"Are…are these…"
"Tally marks. Sort of. I mean that's how they started out. But later I just kind of…stopped counting."
Flippy was so good at subconsciously hiding the scars he was surprised they still existed. Maybe it was the long sleeves, or the automatic turn on his inner arm to his side, or the composed posture. But it had become second nature. Or maybe he'd just stopped caring. Each scar represented a life lost, a friend he would never see again. A quick slice with a razor and he felt some of the guilt fade. It was never enough to be significant, and sooner or later he had stopped counting other people's lives and begun cutting for his own. For mistakes, for failures, and for all the times he wished he'd been the one who died instead.
That had been years ago. Way back into the past and a forgotten memory once he'd met Flaky.
"Flippy," she repeated, and her eyelashes quivered.
"Hey."
"I didn't…"
"Hey, come on."
"I didn't know. I'm sorry I…never noticed before."
"Hey, look at me, don't cry," Flippy felt pangs of guilt dropping down his throat and he reached out to touch her face. But she slipped from his reach and fell into his side, wrapping two, shaky arms around his waist and hiding her face in the crook of his shoulder. The sudden surge of intimacy momentarily startled Flippy before he slowly returned the hug.
Sometimes Flaky was distant and untouchable. And sometimes she was so close it was like they shared the same skin and breathed the same breath.
Before he could say anything more she pushed away, sitting back upright and taking his arm again. She stared at it for a moment, then raised it to her face, cradling it and brushing her cheek against his palm. Then, she pressed brief, chaste kisses on each scar, sweet and warm on dry lips.
"You don't have to hide these," she murmured, locking eyes with him, an intense spark in her voice. Flippy was grounded by the determination, the assurance, and the total and complete acceptance that danced in the brown of her eyes.
"Don't ever hide," she said, reaching out to touch his face for a brief moment before drawing away again. She released his arm, scooting back a bit and straightening her back, squaring her shoulders. With a tinge of pink in her cheeks, she gave him a smile.
It wasn't happy, but it wasn't exactly broken. It was a wordless promise, something that magically made his tension dissipate with relief, unnaturally tender and cosmically warm.
And it would probably take some time. Flippy expected it and it turned out to be true. It took a while for him to believe in that promise and to stop worrying about revealing all the scars. He learned to stop worrying they would make Flaky sad, because hiding it made her sadder. And when he started wearing loose T-shirts and tattered pajama shirts that revealed bits and pieces of skin, Flaky would smile at him. Fondly and softly.
One thing Flaky had learned in the months since she and Flippy had first started living together was that Flippy had the kind of skin that healed quickly and strongly, that was fire over sand, that patched up the remains with purple veils and rough skin. They were the result of grisly things, of dark days and horrible memories. They haunted and tormented and sometimes wouldn't go away.
Flaky learned about these the first winter they spent together. And she also learned she had the uncanny ability to not exactly fix them, but to heal the places in Flippy he once thought he could never show. She learned she didn't have to make the memories go away, or even know all the details about them. And Flippy learned scars weren't ugly reminders. They were beautiful promises.