Oh man everyone, long time no see eh? Well, after a long two years of not writing at all, the lovely Halsey's music gave me just the right amount of inspiration! I have the first bits of the next chapter written and it should be about 5-6 chapters in all. Be patient with me!

Chapter 1

There's a place way down in Bed Stuy,
Where a boy lives behind bricks,
He's got an eye for girls of eighteen,
And he turns them out like tricks

His eyes are as golden as his curls and he wanders the poorly lit streets, thin cigarettes dangling from his perfect lips placed on a perfect face atop a perfect body. He's dangerous and beautiful and he knows it, flirting and sleeping with nameless women with the same single-mindedness of a lion on the hunt.

These women are drawn to him, drawn to his danger and his recklessness. Racing motorcycles with no helmets, hair flying back and arms outstretched to feel the chilled night air racing past. He lives and drinks and fucks with reckless abandon and he's going to end up dead in a ditch someday. Everyone knows it. The women he sleeps with know it and that's why they don't try to change him. You can't save a lost cause after all.

Every morning he goes back to his tiny brick apartment, worn and old with names and dates and messages scratched into the concrete by prior owners. His favorite is the curling initials of C and F. He likes to trace it with his fingers. Sometimes he sits there with a half empty bottle of cheap beer clutched in his hands and wonders if he should add his name up there beside it. Some reminder of his earthly presence before he dies young and alone.

When he sleeps he dreams of grand pianos and lilting music. Of high ceilings and stained glass breaking and tinkling down to the floor. Blood on his feet and in his hair. So much blood.

He wakes up and opens another bottle before going out to stalk the streets again.

I went down to a place in Bed Stuy
A little liquor on my lips
I let him climb inside my body
And held him captive in my kiss

Bloodred lipstick and bloodred kisses. Heavy eyeshadow and thick lashes curled under thicker black hair. She's tall and lean and she turns heads as she goes down the streets, skin burned neon colors by the club signs. Her heels click click click on the sidewalk and she glares at the men who whistle at and catcall her. Gropers are treated with cold efficiency; calculated punches or kicks that take them down with little effort. She wipes her hands, tosses her hair and leaves them groaning on the sidewalk.

She goes to seedy clubs with pounding bass and women in clothes as tight and revealing as her own. She dances and drinks until the early hours of the morning until she finally drags a man into the alleyway, liquor flavoring sloppy kisses and souring breath. She doesn't notice spectacled eyes that watch her from the bar.

She fucks men in those alleys. Quick and dirty and without emotion. She fucks them like she figures her father fucked his secretary while her mother was out. She fucks them because she doesn't know anything else. She doesn't know why her father didn't love her mother and maybe it's because love doesn't exist, but she doesn't want to risk finding out.

She sneaks back into her bedroom in the morning just as her alarm goes off, heels dangling from her fingers and neck peppered with bruises and marks.

She tumbles into bed exhausted and alone.

Her makeup hasn't smeared one bit.

I went down to a place in Brooklyn
Where you tripped on LSD
And I found myself reminded
To keep you far away from me

He doesn't know why he goes. He doesn't know why he goes to the parties where instead of blending in like he usually wants to, he stands out. With his ratty sweaters and hunched shoulders he sticks out from the partiers like a sore thumb.

He's a wallflower and he likes it that way. And maybe that's why he's drawn to the man with the cat green eyes. He's drawn like a moth to a flame. But unlike moths he knows he's going to get burned.

The man burns brighter than the sun with his glittery colored hair and his neon clothes that leave little to the imagination. Piercings and tattoos and a rakish grin make the man larger than life.

He exists in a plane different from this man. This man who is everything he is not. Who interacts easily with the crowd and who deals affection indiscriminately to men and women alike. Stolen kisses between sweet smoke and burning alcohol.

He wonders how those plump lips would feel against his own as a small colorful tablet passes through them, head lolling and easy smile revealing almost too-sharp canines.

This world was not made for a man as animated as this and he knows that one day this man with the green eyes will crash and burn just as surely as his own brother with his leather jackets and mocking smile will. He knows that this man will break his heart and oh how he aches to have it broken.

But truly, how can one break something that is already shattered.

If there are days where he himself partakes in the tiny tablets, home alone and exhausted from the parties, well, who's to know?

He likes the colors.

He says, "Oh, baby, beggin' you to save me.
Well lately, I like 'em crazy.
Oh, maybe, you could devastate me.
Little lady, come and fade me."

She hates him and she loves him and god is she so terrible to hate her only brother. To wish him as dead and gone as their father and mother. She hates his dark eyes and his pale hair, so like their fathers, that beg her to save him from his own vices. She wanders the streets with pad and pencil in hand, drawing for hours on end until all light is gone from the sky and her lips are blue from the cold. She draws the homeless people and the ugly beauty of the city and she loves it and she hates it because she sees her on life in that ugly beauty. But an ugly beauty herself she is not, small and fiery in hair and heart she fights her brother with all she is because she is her mother and he is their father and she remembers how they fought.

Bruises and blood and fading redness from slapped skin and they loathe and love each other in the same breath. She sees the man he could have been and he sees the weakness in her heart. Her love for beauty and the light and he resents it because he has only ever known darkness and he does not want to be alone in it.

Colors flow from her fingertips in ways that do not from his and she draws and paints and the smell of turpentine clings to her hair and she is alive and moving in ways that he is dead and still.

And so what if sometimes his touches linger and his eyes wander.

He is just her brother and brothers don't look at their sisters like that.

Come and fade me
Come and fade me
I'm a hurricane

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