.
.
She likes it when she's on top (she only plays when she's winning). Loves the way her hips can twist, slick with freedom. Loves that she can see all that she owns spread out before her (loves that she owns all of him). Likes the way he reaches up but can't wholly touch her.
She loves that he still tries.
No one has ever tried so hard with her.
(she's easy in all the ways boys like, but only after she's made you bleed and beg.)
Mason's the begging sort.
.
.
There's a funny sort of twist to her lips and he realizes it's a smile. Saddest smile he's ever seen. He won't touch- still - (and he is almost ironically still) but his eyes are filled with her and never leave her own. (And somehow that's worse than all the schoolboys that snatched parts of her, handfuls of innocence with meaty sweaty hands. Somehow it's worse when his eyes grab at her like molasses cause she knows when he turns away he's going to take everything.)
She's so bright he thinks, he tells her she burns. She thinks it's an odd sort of compliment but then those are the only ones that hold her. She's a student of the modern age, the inflections of careless world be damned apathy sound somehow sweet with her accent and almost smile. (She's pretending again and most nights he lets her.)
Because Mason loves her.
And Daisy loves that.
.
.
Mason likes it best when it hurts. When his heart aches from the litany of maybe-never-again's that comes every time she slips from his arms.
And he is drunk on her, off her. Whispering kisses on her brow as she curls up into him- telling him she could never love him.
But the scratches on his back feel a lot like love (like the only love he's ever known.) So he catalogues the bruises like footprints in the sand, easily missed if the tide turns in the wrong way.
And Daisy was always the first to move.
.
.
She goes to England because it's small but in a too big sorta way.
(She goes to England because the stories he told made it sound pretty, and she had finally gotten him to stop calling her that.)
She goes to England because Daisy has loved before.
And it burned her in every sense of the word.
.
.
The man is very nearly ninety, so when he reaps him he can't stop himself from asking if he knew her as the light show starts.
But the man is already lost, already gone, yet Mason stops him, and he holds him, and he begs him to whisper back some part of her past to him.
Some part of her he can keep.
But T.H. Williams walks into a garden like a lamb and he wants to scream at the lie of it, that pretty things are only that way to hide their sting.
He doesn't realize that he is screaming. Not until he gasps down a breath past his raw larynx.
He had only wanted her to stay.
.
.
Sometimes she laughs like her heart is breaking.
Sometimes she thinks it has.
(but it's too late for last regrets)
.
.
