Bojack And His Wife

by ClarissaStories

Within the bright chaos known as Los Angeles, there are two that are destined to be together, knowing it in some lives within the layers where they're lucky enough to share with one another, and not in others. The most disorienting part: all of the complex experiences of that kind of transcending love all within one mind and body as it spills across the lives they share.

1. Chapter 1

Dry. Awake. Dirty and grim.

The day was polluted. The headspace of being forced back into perception of reality met the gradual understanding of the senses around you. The black feeling that came along with the shock of being in the kind of circumstances you were for this long were starting to come back. It lasted only for a moment, replacing the stagance of detachment that came along with never fully processing your situation due to the bittersweet benefit of the protection of vague sense of denial.

Your hand grasped onto the ten dollar bill you had crumpled into your pocket before you properly opened your eyes. The dirt that was caked on your cheek complimented the shakiness of your hand as you felt yourself give a hitch of a breath; one that came from whatever you had inhaled lying flat on behind the grit of the sidewalk earlier that day. The mundanity of the spot you had found yourself in was one settlement practiced as exactly as the routine you had long since become used to in order to survive.

You had seen the grim of the sidewalk and the splat of the dirt that sat on the back wall countless times previously on the same empty days, where the only pattern of meeting the fogginess of your detached eyes was the constant ongoing aimlessness that came along of the complex feeling of the analysis of an unwell mind and a body without a home.

Your eyes opened as you felt the burning of your cheek meet against the side of the hard pattern of the sidewalk. Your lips cracked opened, and you could feel the physical dryness there in your throat as you felt yourself coming back from the disorientation that came along from the deep detachment of lack of consciousness, and the abrupt wake that came along with all the small minute challenges that you weren't even aware you were always fighting until you had such a natural bleak break from them temporarily.

Your palms began to ease onto the grim of the sidewalk as your skin pressed against it momentarily, your chin raising up, and for the countless time in your life did you feel yourself easing into the animalistic rhythm of the chaos of existence as the back of your headspace fell into a black acceptance of the ache of your body and the usual weary patterns of your mind that came to the pinnacle of just how exhausted they truly were for that minute moment they were forced to come from the bleak backdrop of sleep.

You were aware of the aching of your throat as you turned your head up, and with your body curling in on itself with the tattered dress you had been wearing the past few weeks; the tailor that you met with the kind eyes who had come to guess your story if only from the pathetic tattered ways you carried yourself with your hands gripped against the dirtiness of your skin and the pathetic nothing of your constant timid energy that caused her to have sympathy for her donation to you; a kindness that could only be met in small minute real life intimate scenarios such as that one that you knew was rare, even in that scenario.

Your lips pressed together, the bottom of your lip raising up onto the top of your other one in that undignified and delusional way that came from the disorientation that you had from the constant strain of your mental and physical streatching of your body. Your eyes fluttered up into a blink as you gave a breath, this time the tone sounding especially scratched against your throat, causing you to wince as you gave a heaved breath; the air of Los Angeles has been especially dry lately, and even more with a smog that was dressing and pollutining into the ease of the already defaulted grey clouded sky that normally sat above the buildings.

Your hands were cracked and cacked with dirt as you turned your head down, your body curling forward as you gave another dry heave while your body shook; that feeling of being inhuman wasn't one that had become foreign to you at this point in your life where being inhuman and being treated as such from casual passagers didn't lessen their loathing in looking down at the dirty cake of trembling lost people that the majority who had never fallen into the cracks were even capable of processing. Your neck turned up as your lips cracked and pressed against one another again as your kneeled your body back onto your thighs, your other palm coming to grip onto the white tatter of your dress. The tailor swan who had made the rags for you had been one of someone who gave you that special extra time to make you one of something special;

"You can't go around and try to be naked and a woman without the world coming to your feet in the most detrimental way possible, honey." The tone that left her beak was one of someone who had a thick intention of a pushy judgment, but underneath it from the start you had been aware of the warmth of her ultimate intention.

The walk was about two hours away by foot; as of late, your various methods for being able to own even half of a bill of twenty dollars had been becoming increasingly less possible. Your legs were beginning to ache from the amount of time they spent by the edge of the sidewalk and the grim that caked into your clothes and how it made every movement feel like an unwarranted chore; your body had become less able to give the passing by man what he wanted enough for a quick meal or for anything to add on to anything to do with your existence except for the constant emotional disorientation and mental foggy headedness that came along with the life of always being far from comfortable or even tolerable, mentally or emotionally from others, or the constant reminder on various media that the level you were on in life was of someone who was of a cheap punchline; or worse, a person who was at the hand of any vindictive person passing by, knowing your name, or lack of it, and your life was one easily thrown away that it was far from controversial as to whether anyone would notice.

Your bones ached as you leaned your torso back on your thighs underneath the trembling of your hand, trying to come back to the sense of focus you needed in order to make the walk. Your hands gripped on the deteriorating white fabric that had ripped through the sex of the random whiskey laden men with maddening eyes who thrusted their bodies onto you; some homeless, a mirror reflection of your situation, others simply someone of a richer high power who wanted to enjoy the fruits of their labor with a cheap body of nothing for quick minute fix in the back corner of a dirty wall to pleasure themselves for as long as they needed the serotonin without any significance beyond that.

You would take whatever they granted you with the material that crumpled in their hand; the trail of a spiral that you found yourself in now was part from their increased understanding that you took what you could, and left it at that, and the amount they handed you began to decrease along with their gradual realization that they could give or not give what they liked. Even in the grim of your caked and dirty skin that was the definition of someone who had a roll of the low status beyond recall of anything other than constant inward battlement, they couldn;t quite fathom just how low you were, just how much you would take from them of what they would give, and just how much they could get away with once they became aware of how powerless you truly were.

Ten dollars had become five dollars, and five dollars had started to become cents. It wasn't until one of the men, a man who had had interocurse with you enough times behind a dirty splattered wall with especially sharp features of cheekbones and pale skin that gave away someone who was well off enough, that handed you fifty cents for the entirely of the hour and forty five minutes of your head being cracked against the pavement, your back burning from the asphalt of the road as your eyes turned up while you felt the pain of him entering and thrusting into you that you that it began to sink into your understanding of what it truly meant to be nothing; of the amount of people and their whims they could thrust onto you without punishment.

"Enough for one meal." Your words had come out shaken, uncertain and with something that would have only confirmed their beliefs, lips pressed against one another as your hand pressed across your cheek in an undignified apology of desperation. Your eyes fluttered down as you felt yourself giving an awkward breath of a hitch from the ache of your body from the night that had occurred a couple of afternoons ago. Your eyes snapped up to the cents; seventy five. The man's pale lips had raised into a vague smirk on his lips that looked as if he as rich enough that he got work done on his face as his eyes eased across yours, and then crumpled his hands on the cents while he turned it back into his pocket, dug through his coat, and then pulled out another few crumpled bits of dollars. Your hand had snatched for it, crumping it by your cest where your breasts were hanging out and open from your white tattered rags. The man had taken to raising up his eyebrows as his eyes traced across your body as yu tried to fumble your hands onto your rags, pulling up the white of the tattered and stretched folds of the dress while you eased the dress up onto your torso; the same rags that were now coming undone from the strings. Whether or not you would be able to make it over to the proper tailor store where the swan woman would take her usual empathy on you to offer you help for the dress was still up for debate, and even still, you had to figure out the process of getting there.

"Know your worth, strip dress." The man had said it quickly, and even as he had taken a piece of the tattered white rag that had been attached to your dress while he had made love to you and had pressed it across te dirt on his face with a smudge while he titled his head to the side and turned his eyes away from you as he got himself up, the intention of the words had been clear.

"What?" You had crumpled the dollars against your palm as the red edge of your eyes had snapped up and looked at him, though the dread of the experience you had with human nature told you all you needed to. The man raised up his eyebrows as he gave a cocked and askew look of his lip with he cracked his head to the side, and with a kick of his boot did he turn a dim that sat by his shoe over to you. Playing along with the undignified role that you knew now he had been using to confirm as to weather or not you were worth anything even as a quick and cheap fix to subdue his desires did your body lean forward in front of him as you gripped for the dim. The man chuckled as he finished pressing the coat around his shoulders, and as he hoisted it up and began to walk away casually, he called over his shoulder in a casualty that spoke of all the void you knew it meant to;

"Good luck out there."

To no surprise, you had never seen him again. And to an even lesser surprise, the tattering of the spin of your dress and the strings of it were already starting to fall apart further as you got yourself up; your head turned down as you gripped your hands onto the folds of the dress before the rags fell off your thighs entirely just as you managed to get enough feeling in your body to get yourself upward. Your head titled down as your fingertips gripped on your rags while you tousled the cloth into a large swab of your palms, then turned your head upward as you craned your head back and rolled your shoulders.

The ache in your body was enough as it was that it made you want to invest in the next twenty that you could get in the next area with a new gritty reputation as much as you were able to away from the quick mumbled passing of the one you had evidently built up here from the men that must have strung together their own form of mocking for your situation like an entangled cobweb of gossip for a bottle of vodka; the calores weren't much, but it was enough to both detach you from reality into a detached leadway of the usual lack of virtue and control robbed from you otherwise, and along with that, the simple feeling of making your body just sick enough that for the time you had the bottle, food was not only something of a lack of concern, but also something not of want.

You leaned your body backward as a final crack of your body until you finally felt yourself standing up into an upright position, though it was clear that the ache in your body would be present for the next few days. Your eyes had that edge of a burning feeling as you turned your head over your shoulder to the small convenience store you had collapsed in front of a few hours before your exhaustion from making the walk towards the last public are you had slept in front of had caused you to leave; there had been too many rumors of people obtaining and increased disdain for the clearly unhoused who lived there, and it wouldn't have been the first time you had seen another peer of yoru stature go to sleep nearby, and to wake up with their foggy docile eyes and mouth open with a metal piece stuck into their back; a passengers quick amusement of what they knew they could get away with when it comes to people with that amount of lack of power.

Your head wasn't clear, but you had been in that place of foggy detachment of identity, of which you now had almost none, and of that lack of making clear sense of reality such as you did now. Your head turned up as the burning of your eyes, still muggy from the unnatural feeling of resting on the hard ground, turned as you looked over at the front convenience store on the other side of the road.

Fifty cents for an entire container of sweets of your choice-A Great Deal, Offered Today Only!

There was a vintage theme to it, the words marked in blocked and large blue letters as they were dressed across the fairly unkempt and unimpressive windows that sat around the store. All of the typical American candy was lied out under the blocks; Sour Patch, Reeces, Dots, Hereshys, Swedish Fish, abd the other assorted bright colors that rested under the blare of the sign in a stoic indifference as the the business of the city passed by in its detachment, not unlike you had long since started feeling yourself in relation to anyone surrounding you, and very little to be done to lessen the abrasive suffering that came from the lack of connection or anything to be done to even understand it. You blinked as you tried to come back to any reasoning you could find in your headspace as you stretched your body further upward, rolling your shoulders in an attempt to dull the ache, cramping your fingertips in an an attempt to soothe how cramped they felt. Reason felt far from reachable, but you tried to fight through the muggy headedness that came with despair and the feeling of hopeless meaningless; the pattern was the same level every day, and it never got harder or easier, just the same stagance of the same challenge and, eventually, recovery once you churned through the muddiness that made up your headspace.

The man inside was a heavyset mole man, the wear of the emptiness of his mundane time throughout the years of his life filled in visibility through the broad and large compass of the physicality of his body. He bore nothing but a blue shirt that wrapped around his plush and broad shoulders, the glasses resting on his snout as he busied himself with the cashier beyond the see through tint of the blue windows.

You felt your throat rasp again, the scratchiness of it easing against your throat as it met the dry air of what surrounded you. You blinked as you turned your eyes down to where your hands were still kept cramped onto your palms as you heard the unhealthy whistle noise of your throat while you turned your eyes down and to the crumple of the rags on your hands. Despondently did your thumbs caress against your dress for a moment, and in that muggy way the best that someone could, as someone who was coming to accept the narrative of their lack of worthwhile presence in life at all hours, the back of your head began to go through the different small components that you had rested in your rags that you had managed to manipulate into pockets for the times when you did have money.

With the attempt of the ability to try to fight through the constant emptiness and baggage of a life of someone who was now nearing their mid thirties and being at the status and on the brink of an easy death that your mind had become accustomed to did you began to think over if there was a way you could get anything from the other side of the road-not because you wanted to or because you had the time or the energy with the limited stigma that you barely possessed enough as it was, but more so from the literal need you felt that made it a robotic requirement; much like your force of moving your body and pretending to feel functional, despite having long since had your body and your immediate perception of reality long since gone from the understanding that you still existed.

Your head turned up just as your palm snapped over to your breast; you felt a quick pace of your heart as you felt the familiar end of the crumple that made up a dollar. Your fingers began to crumple against the feeling of the dollar underneath the cloth of the white dress, the material cheap enough that it gave away to plenty of feeling of the fabric meeting on your fingertips as you felt the material underneath it. You felt a shaky breath go through your lips as your fingertips gripped on the dollar through the cheap fabric, and your other hand went to grip the fabric on your dress as you crumpled it forward and furher onto your palm while the other grasp of your hand began to turn frnacitally into the fabric of the dress, turning over the material as your fingers came to grip on the paper of the money. Your eyes snapped down as you took the paper dollar and gripped it against your fingertips, turning the money over into your hand as your eyes passed over the bill; the number five was crossed on it with block letters.

The night before began to pass by your mind with the foggy and detached memory that came along with the feeling of the grittiness of the man's hand on your thighs last night; you hadn't chosen the place by the sidewalk with your cheek rested on the grim of the cement for nothing. Your body ached awhile he had thrusted himself into you; a man with cacked wrinkles and grim and dirt on his feuatres as the maddening black and crossed his eyes while he had looked over your expression until your exhaustion, or one of the countless patterns of fading in and out of consciousness for whatever reason that came along with processing your existence caused you to open your eyes in and out from the feeling of his body by your torso and thighs.

He must have been especially generous; for the amount of interaction you had had with men in the area lately that had led to begging on top of begging. Through foggy and unpleasant memories did you begin to pierce together the memory of him beginning to ease himself off of your body with a crumpled cigarette and yellow tainted grim on the dollar as he had taken it over the white tear of the dress around your body that had previously dressed under your beast, his hand coming to grip on the dress as he took the dollar bill and placed it into a small satin pocket that he then took to press against your breast. Your own nature of being present had faded in and out by then, but you could remember the grittness of his amusement as he had started to ease his body up, cackled laughter and his body dressed in heavy packaging of the tan of his coat dressed heavily around his body as he had gotten his weight off of you.

Your hands tore off the layer of the satin and gripped onto the dollar bill on your palms, and with your head turning up to the eggshell blue of the sky did you feel a whisper breath leave your lips as you sent up a inward thank you to the lightness of relief that came over you momentarily. There was a strength and an odd beauty to those that had found themselves in the department of life of being less than nothing, and you felt that brief ethernal purity of being someone with desperate and pathetic but ultimately pure and simple intentions as your hand gripped on the bill.

Your head snapped over to the road; it was broken and cracked from its lack of care, such as it could be with certain areas of Los Angeles. Your head snapped to the side as your eyes turned over the passing cars that were beside the busier street that already had its suggested of a busier crowd of a day that stood in front of the end of the street that gave away to the further busy nature of the loud crowd of downtown Los Angeles later on. For the amount of inspiration and strength you felt for a moment, you were also reminded just by the passing by of people of the constant reminder that all inner life and complexity about you was only relevant to you, a fire only to carry you into this long day and onto the next. Your fingertips crumpled against the paper dollar, looking down at the dirty grim of the yellow stained of the dollar bill; and somehow even your pain had a layer of pain to it that came along with a punishment that for reasons beyond your understanding you felt you deserved.

You began to cross the desolate and cracked street that gave away to far les activity into the more fun down buildings that were mostly cheap and low end stations as you rushed your way across it, keeping your head downward while you ran over to the low end convince store. The mole man's care was parked by the other side of the building and over to the worn down parking street, the only one that would be bothered to be in such a mundane place for the day by obligation; and yet, knowing this mood and the amount of low beyond low of what it entailed, you found your own end of peace even from the idea of having a solid place to rest for a little while, the judgment that could have come from the settlement balanced by the relief that came when you allowed the judgment from others of a universal level to surpass for a little while. As it was with humanity, people had to mold themselves into a certain worth in order to get themselves to be cared about by others with no obligation or motive when their loved ones were gone, just as you had to readjust your body and your begging every day for the sake of surviving by selling yourself as the youth of a woman for as long as you could mange.

He was chuckling under his breath, rasped and with that edge of a cigarette strain to his voice as he bumbled around the back gray counter, his eyes turned down beyond the small circle glasses while he kept his hands on the materials that sat beside him on the front of the counter beyond the glass that sat above it. You kept your head ducked downward as you made your way inside, your hands cramped against the dollar while you walked your way inside. A vague cheap music was trailing over the other side of the counter, a vague tune of a mundane cheap tune through a small grey box as the mole man kept his eyes turned into focused amusement through the pieces of boxes of candy on display. His eyes tuend up as his attention drew over to you as he heard a ring from the equally dingy bell that retsed agaisntthe door like a cheap cliche, not unlike the way you felt as you ducked your way inside, keeping the cheap threads against your body as you walked your way inside and gave the man a quick minute smile.

"Whoa." The mole man bit his lip, raising up his eyebrows as he did so as the squint of his narrow eyes peeked over the circle of his glasses. He chuckled in a low grumbled way of amusement while he lumbered his way over to the cashier, his eyes turning up as he met over your body while you gave a nod and placed it on the counter.

"You the one that slept outside on the sidewalk last night, gave this place a bad name?"

Your eyes turned over the colored candy that was placed in each of its colored boxes of its large and neon advertisement; your hand reached out over to the nearest one, the bright yellow looking at an odd foreign contrast to the pale of your hand as you placed the dollar onto the counter while it crumpled onto the desk. The mole man's eyes turned over to the crumpled dollar as his lips turned up into a mocking amsuemnt, not bothering to hide the superficial edge of his amusennt behind the circle of his glasses as he lumbered forward, his palms pressed on the dollar as he looked it over. You froze as you placed the colored box further to your chest while you watched him in a suspended question of if he would take it.

He shook his head and chuckled to himself lightly again, lumbering his way back over to the cashier as he punched his hand onto it. He placed the dollar onto the components of the cashier while he turned the dollar bill into it.

"You want to use your last few dollar bills until the next cuck comes along on a bunch of quick sugar?"

You gave a quick shrug of your shoulders, gripping your hand onto the box as you kept it by your chest.

"I just wanted to spend what I could afford. Food is food."

The man chuckled, and he turned the narrow of his gray snout down while he eased his hands on the cashier.

"Even just three of these boxes would be enough to take up the majority of my life working at this place for half a day. For a half hour to an hour, about three Reeces."

You stepped back, the tension in your body blaring with the idea if you would be able to leave without note. The man leaned his plush body forward as he gripped onto the bright neon orange box, turning his eyes over it as he gave a gleam of his emotion while his eyes turned over the brown advertising.

"Crazy, isn't it? The things America allows people to waste the minutes of their life on. Thirty five minutes at a job no one wants to be at, and they price it just right so it takes away a chunk of your day to spend on shit like this-and this is the crumbs of the shit people spend their money on. You may be homeless, but you're free in that sense. Good on you, you little sad thing."

"I could never hear back from any jobs." Your hands gripped further on the box as you kept your eyes down onto the neon box, stepping back as much as the small talk would allow you to without making it so that you could be pushing past something that would take it from you because he decided to in the rude minute whims of his social determinant. "I've learned how to get by. That's all anyone is doing. Probably, more than likely, also the people who made the price of the candy."

The mole man leaned the meaty feeling of his palms on the edge of the counter as he shook his head while his hfy body leaned forward. "Don't be so pure. That might be the reason why no one wants to bother with someone so-out of touch. How can you be trusted to work with the public, who is so consistently the opposite?"

"It's really just that once people notice that you're homeless, dirty, no one will give you the time of day. In general."

The mole man's eyes flicked up as he gave a vague grim raise to his lip, and it met the foggy muddled look of his eyes that made up a complacent life.

"Not unlike a convenience worker, then."

You gave a quick head tilt, then gripped your hand further on the candy as you turned to make your way over to the door.

"Thank you, anyway."

"Don't waste too much time worrying about those kind of things."

You paused as you made your way to the open door, keeping your head turned down while your fingertips gripped on the candy placed against the scratch of your fingertips. Your hand was pushed against the door as you heard the ringing of the bell while your hand pressed against the cold surface of the door, your lips pressed against one another tightly before you turned to the mole man, who was now breathing even heavier from the weight of his words and the unhealthy mundanity of the buzzing noise that drowned out the stagance of the white light surrounding him.

"What?"

The mole man raised up his brows, thin and black while he gripped his hand on the yellow stained bill, turning it back to the cashier as he pushed his hand on it and into the cheap cashier. His small eyes flicked back up to you as he gave a quick raise of his brow, edged attitude that came along with the soullessness of his job.

"About not being able to hear back from a job." He grunted as he leaned his heafy body forward and gripped onto one of the candy boxes, shaking them as he indicated his eyes towards them. "Just for cheap comforts that barely even matter long term."

"And for a roof over your head." There was a blunt edge to your tone, enough that the mole man's eyes flashed as his expression turned up to you with a flash of his eyes at the point of your tone.

"Enough to at least make people care enough about you in their selfish nature of the fact that they don't care about anything about you unless you can sell yourself a certain way." Your burning eyes turned up to the stagnant of the white lights, and a maddening tremor came across your features for a moment as the emptiness of the days that had carried you clotted up into a intense red fight for a moment while blotting across your air from the amount of black anger surrounding you from the apathy and lack of emotional need that had followed the majorty of your day. "At least you earned the small low ability of being able to sit under a stagnant light every day and to have that kind of permission. That's a lot of blessing, no matter how much they try to take even that away from you in terms of whatever little sanity it might give you. People think they're low in life when they can't even imagine how truly terrible and low things can get for other people that people can't even know exists, and don't care to, either. I've seen people like me getting throttled for their life, and people agree and laugh at it to say it's justified." Your burning eyes turned back over to the mole man as you gave him another abrupt and curt nod. You jutted your hip with an insistence against the door frame, this time with a more heated pointed as you gave the man another curt and abrupt nod while stepping your way back out as your fingertips gripped on the box. "Thanks for the snack."

Your head turned down now, with a vague curt nod as you pressed your chin on your chest and rebalanced your hand on the candy, turning your body back to the door as you shoved your way out. The bell rang behind you as you stepped your way out while you closed your eyes as you tried to recollect yourself. Your head turned up, the breeze and the pollution of it offering an emptiness that, ironically, offered you a vague sense of clarity to come down from the sudden rush of your abrasive insult and red that had come over you from what the mole man had insisted with his stagnant inhumanity and the nature that he had of looking over people around him for the sake of his own pattern of selfish protection instead of actually having to challenge himself to project humanity. You had long since learned that it was all types of people that chose slefihsness and judgement and the lazy complacency of offering nothing but a selfish and insulting guard to the people around them, lacking a narrative of their own poetry and beauty of life to either offer to others around them ot to even themselves until they folded from the inside out from their own complacy and robbed themselves of any beauty or genuine experience in what should have made up human connections and experiences around them. That stoic, naturally foggy and inhuman detachment in the mole man's eyes had been one you had long since come to recognize in any given person; in the actors of the media that flashed across the occasional screen you would see on the sides of the night light of complacent and comfortable people in their apartments or homes whenever you found yourself roaming around the houses and the stagance light of the yellow bright light of their rooms as they fell into the comfortable foggy routine of the night, pushing away all want of possibilities of being able to genuinely explore existence or of other people at all hours as they modeled themselves into their routine of what made up their superficial life and their less than half an inch of a genuinely insightful soul, and therefore of even being human, or of someone who was even halfway alive; as you had roamed the streets late at night, unbounded by the stagnant warmth that made up a home that surrounded you that caused others to fall into the foggy and comfortable selfishness that made up their gradually increasingly more lazy inhuman lives, you had realized that their lack of mercy and most especially company wasn't something to be warned; they had long since lost their humanity, the very little they had been born with in their youth, and lacked the capacity to challenge themselves to be inventive and to find new ways of stretching themselves out within their lives outside of the robot routine they followed, and more notable than that-the way they so easily, wthehr someone of celerbity status or of someone of a mundane and unremarkable lifestyle, always took the official and straightforward route of offering distaste and invaldiaiton and of abrasive insult to any given person around the few people they managed to claw in as their friend with their lack of rmeakrbale human depth; that, in its own way, had also gradually chipped away the profound grief you felt at being treated terribly and dismiccely by these people daily and had left you with a stagnant indifference towards the people that passed you as you observed the way they treated one another by default daily, with empty mean spirited superficial robotic soullessness, and as much as you suffered for the lack of human connection, you realized it wasn't what humanity was that you wanted, bur rather the idea of what you wished people could have been-and beyond that, you didn't care or wonder about their company or the details about them any more than they did you.

The result was a constant foggy, detached dissociation of what you wish could have been with the natural desires you had, with very little to any quality people that ever could have fulfilled them, no matter the circumstance you were in, anyway; though you got the idea at this point that the person you were was someone who would overtake the entirety of your perception of reality, you hardly cared for any criticism or even illness that took towards that perception; the rolling of the care and dressing of reality you had, flawed and as prone to challenge as it could be at times, was also the same and only connection to humanity of what could have even halfway felt good you had; and there certainly wasn't anything to miss from the empty eyes on the other side that were full of lack of depthful sight than they were anything else.

Your lips pressed together again as you felt the crack of the dirt from your skin burn through your mouth, and the muscles on your face furrowed and tensed as you felt the taste of the asphalt that you had tasted from waking up on the side of the street. Your fingertips eased across your arm against as you turned your head down and looked at the box of the neon candy box that was placed in your palm. With another dirty and grimy hand did you take the trembling of your fingertip and place it on the front of the box, opening it open as you ripped open the cardboard and looked into the glow of the unnatural stagance that made up the material inside.

Your fingers pressed on the candy as you eased your fingertip while easing it out from the box, feeling the stagance from the air through the dry of your mouth while you placed the orange of the candy into your mouth. Your tongue rolled around the hard material as you felt the sweetness begin to wash through the walls of your dry mouth, and though the need for water increased, the tinge of the sweetness gave a shot through your mouth that caused a bit of strength to dress through your senses. You laughed, the sound shaky but focused as you pressed the leftover hue of the orange against your skin and pressed your fingertips against the leftover hue of the orange. You placed another one in your mouth as you turned your eyes over to the other end of the cracked street, wrapping your palms against the box as you rushed your way over to the other side of the street. You turned as your back kneeled against the back of the brick wall, gripping your hands on the strands of the white cloth further as you turned your head down to the box while you took the candy and placed another ball of the sugar into your mouth, your tongue rolling against the feeling of the shoot of sugar across your mouth while the sensation crossed against your senses and offered you more energy; it was sickly, disassociated, foggy, and far from health, but you had learned a long time ago that life wasn't about being happy, especially with the corners of the world you had found yourself in in life.

Your head turned back up as it leaned against the brick wall, the muscles on your face beginning to lessen in their tension as you turned your head back on the wall and felt the sugar burst through your mouth. It mixed in with the stagnant feeling of alcohol that you must have shared with the man bitterly, but there was a sense of the rush of it adding a sense of freshness to the rest of the long walk you had in front of you; from the trembling of your legs and the dirt that was caked across your skin, you had a long sense of doubt that there would be a chance you would have the energy, or that you would make it; with everything you did these days there was the subconscious caution that you knew there would be a chance you wouldn't be able to find the strength to get to the next island of what you needed to function, and the rolling over your mind of the guarantee of death was something you had long since found both a bonding with an an abrasive fear of; and yet the consideration of the possibility was one you had bonded with more consistently than anything else that had come and gone with the inevitable suffering of your psychological state that came along with the passing and going of what people were from whatever lack of quality they had inside of them to even come close to human.

You breathed in, the sound clumsy and far from charming, but your head rolled back and your body slunk down to the floor, and the grim of the sidewalk underneath you met the aching of your legs as you felt yourself ease on top of it. Your head titled back, the fogginess of your burning eyes meeting up on the sky; it was polluted with gray, and the pale of your legs turned up to your breasts as you felt your lips pressed against one another.

Your head turned to the side as you watched the usual bundle of the chaos that came along with downtown Los Angeles begin to start, the bustling of the bodies and the flash of the business of people that you had long since found a strength in in reonzgining that they were incapable of being anything even close to human fogging over your eyes as you watched the flash of the arms and the bodies make their way through the business of the exhausted distraction of their days that would, more than likely, work for less than half for them that you had long since been freed from that came along with being released from the routine that came along with still having home; the ironic freedom that came from the acceptance of the foreseeable end of your life with any day too long coming ahead.

The disorientation of your mind that came along with the constrain strain of survival mode was still present, but you fell into the routine you always did; the forced focus of concentraion, the rmeinder that this was all there was and the desire from anything from anyone else was a folly from someone who couldn't even find their humanity even for themselves, and you fell into the present mess of your reality, your hand gripped on the half empty candy.

Your leg stretched out in front of you, and your body curled forward as you readjusted your back forward, leaning your back forward as much as you could and away from the aching, your mind clearing as much as it was able from its emotional deprivation as you tried to find a routine into the focus of the pattern, and for the countless time in the past ten years did the detached foggy uncertainty of your day begin.

OOOOO

"Hey." Bojack's head turned to the phone as he shouldered his way out the gray door, fingertips awkwardly cramped onto the plastic bag of the bottles of vodka that he had hanging low beside his knees. His annoyance was increased in small vague jabs with every swing of the plastic bag that hit against his knee, and he winced as he turned his eyes down to the log weight of the bag, his expression full of tension while he tried to make any readjustment of the trash bag he could manage.

"Hello. Convenience Store in Downtown Los Angeles. If you're here often than you probably already know who I am. I'm the only one who ever works here."

Bojack's eyelids lowered, heavier and even more weighed down by alcohol than usual from the night he had woken up in a disorientation from. He kept on with the annoyance of the baggage of talking to other people with their flaws and minute quick disregarded annoyances as he always did, lest he fall into a psychological spiral; he ignored it and kept going clean.

"Your hours are about nine to five, the usual, is that right?"

"Officially we close at six p.m. In the afternoon, that is."

"Yeah, I know what p.m. refers to. Those hours apply to today, right?"

"'Course they do. Every day."

"Even weekends? What, you don't even get a chance to at least go home and think about how miserable you are staring at the wall before you go back to the crappy dump?"

His eyes turned to the phone he had placed in his palm as he looked down at the photos he had looked up of the place earlier; nothing but the usual soulless gray surroundings of a gray counter, the glass that sat on top of it, and the food doors that had the usual cheap containers. The stagance and unremarkable lack of much of anything other than the most predictable convenience met his dry eyes as he turned his eyes down to the phone, grunting as he lifted the heavy plastic bag on his shoulder while he grunted as a replacement for having it dangle by his knee.

"Don't get too cocky just because you're a halfway celebrity, Bojack. I know that it feels like life is made of these specific goals and accomplishments and tasks and headspaces that separate your life from someone else's', but that just adds to the fogginess of whatever makes you so sharp. We're all just keeping ourselves busy at the end of the day."

"First of all, halfway?" He raised his fingertip as it looped open through the gray trash bag, his tone dry and unaffected for the most part as he walked his way to the red topleess car. His eyebrows raised as he made his way to the back seat of the white leather chairs, grunted as he winced and threw the bag over the backseat. He placed a hand on his hip as he lead into his usual routine and of what he had long since gotten tired of to give him an identity, but it was something to lean on, anyway, and he would take the identity he could get. "You're lucky I even called this place up. If I wanted I could pay you to come here and pick my shit up. And belueve me, that would be the more preferable option than walking into a place that practically says 'Bojack, please drink more alcohol to forget this stsgant and awful memroy."

His eyes widend in therticla mockery as his arm turned in front of him in a gesture. He winced as his and placed back on the curl of his hip while he walked around the red car, wincing as he eased his hand forward and gripped his fingertip on the cardoor as he eased his body inside. "You're welcome. Maybe you can do that corny thing where you take a photo with me and place it on the back wall so losers can come in and think it's cool that a halfway celebrity came and made your place interesting for a night. Or is that too much events for you for one night?"

As he grumbled to himself while he heard the mole man take in an abrupt and intense intake.

"There are other places I can recommend to you, if you'd like, Horseman. I would actually prefer if you did. I don't have a lot of people coming in today, but if this is the kind of energy you're coming in with, it's the amount of about sixteen different people coming in and at once and taking away whatever little energy I would have left for an entire day."

Bojack's ears flicked back, but only for an inch, and only with the slightest edge of shame.

"Good one."

"I'm not kidding."

Bojakc rolled his shoulders as he winced his burning eyes up to the gray sky while he turned his hand on the gray metal key as he heard the engine start up. He turned as he placed his arm on the back of the white seat, turning his eyes over to the driveway as he rolled his way over to the open golden gate, and with a cramp of his hand did he press his palm casually onto the button on the driver's control. His head turned over his shoulder as he continued to back the car out and then turned as he felt his face lower into an empty stagance as he felt the usual sickliness come over him that came along with the repetition of a log and sickly pattern that came along with lack of connection. His fingertips tipped on the front of the wheel as he felt his pride chip away before he spoke; he had that vulnerable humanity to him whether it was recognized or not, and it wasn't as if the detachment that came from the alcohol didn't help to clear his hand from the increased heavy slope he had been on recently.

"I'm sorry. I'm just having a bad day. I should drop these off and try to go rest or something. Not your fault."

There was no response for a moment from the mole man, and Bojack's snout raised up as that usual stoic dryness met on his expression as he already felt that stagance of emptiness meeting him for the day of the few interactions that he would have that day and the mood disorders that came along with them; no amount of awareness was able to prevent the side effects of the inevitable. He heard through the speaker of his phone that he placed lightly on the front of the speaker the sounds of the heavyset mole man jostling his body through the space; Bojack's eyes winced down as he looked over at the speaker with an eyebrow raised through the thick stangance of his indifference and exhaustion.

"What is going on?"

"What are you bringing? Someone to throw out?"

"Vodka bottles." Bojack's eyelids lowered as he looked in front of him as the clutter of the mansions that were a few feet of driving down the hill presented in front of him as he began to drive down the hill that had him jutted up on a tall hill away from the houses, the admittance of it a comfort of validation for his pain as much as it was something that was far from freezing to admit. "A couple of days worth. Hours, maybe, in the upcoming days."

"Yikes." The mole man chuckled, and Bojack winced over at his phone as he heard the mole man laugh on the other side that accompanied the sound of his body moving behind the counter; the sounds of cheap candy and other various items that sounded as cheap as the store communicated through the speaker from his laugh, and Bojack snapped his eyes up in exhaustion, though even this unpleasant communication, jaded and as empty as it made him feel, was something to take him out of that off and fogged edged inhuman headspace that was on the other side of a long and isolated day, where sanity or reason seemed far from feasible. "It's that time of your life?"

"I heard there was going to be a lot of events and shit going downtown today and the next motnh, and I know it's going to be annoying, so, yeah." The annoyance of his puffy and fogged annoynce didn't leave as he snapped his eyes over to the street while his ears were now completely splaeyd down. "Can you recycle the bottles of vodka? I don't like to kep them around because-" His fingertips tapped on the wheel as he took a quick intake of his breath while his teeth closed together. "-I don't usually hold back on the whole 'alcohol' thing once I start, and I know the more bottles i keep around, the more likely it is I'll overdrink with the new ones and the old ones."

"Aren't they empty?"

"Where there's a way to drink more alcohol I'll find it. That's my point, Lessen the chances." His round stomach spilled in his lap as he leaned lazily further against the white seat while he turned his eyes to the side of where the bottles were thrown against one another beside him. "I'll pay you to take them, if that makes the decision any clearer."

"I asked because I'd love to take them."

Bojack's eyes brightened vaguely. "Really?"

"There's this strange woman. She comes around every now and then-usually has a large and dirty man with her that she places her hand in and walks around him. Clearly the type of woman who would benefit from having any kind of distraction from the worthlessness of her life she can get. She comes around with these men, and they clearly know the way around my area."

"Your area." Bojack said the first word with emphasis, his eyebrows raised up into that dry challenge. The round plush of his stomach became more stout and round as he leaned further forward; his clothes were stained and old and overworn from the unremarkablity that came with wearing something too many days for too long, and even more so his over familiarity with himself and the natural stangance of loathing and detachment that came along with it. "Isn't this just some trashy place you made yours a little while ago?"

"With the rep that it's getting, pretty soon it will be known as the corner store trashy convenience store. I'll tell you that. I know it's not always the best thing on the surface to have people coming and going and defining you as such, but a sense of power is a sense eof power-and it's not as if those kind of things are fair, anyway. People spend their entire lives working to become aprodutive admirable doctor and still get treated like nothing in the real world just because they didn't shake their ass on the televsion screen for empty minded cattle at least once or twice in their lives. Meanwhile, those people are treated like Gods."

"It's harder than it looks. The shaking ass on camera." Bojack's eyes were lowering further as he felt the usual patterns of his emotion state follow; it added an odd mature grace to his face, worn and as detached with disgust as it was. His bottom eyelids winced as he stopped in front of a light; with a few more feet, according to the map that flashed on his phone, he would be at the convenience store soon enough. "So you'll take them?"

"The point is is that this place is getting a 'my trashy convenience store' reputation, and I want to keep that with me as much as I'm able. This woman comes and along with these large, boulder men; I can't imagine why-maybe for purpose, maybe for a sense of chipping away at her reality and giving herself the guise of being seen for a little while. But the image, especially from an outsider's perspective, is far from sweet. It scares people off. She's clearly homeless, and no one wants to be bothered with someone that low in life, if you understand me."

"Ok." The emptiness in Bojack's eyes increased; throughout the conversation was there small minute subconscious signs of lack of mercy and humanity that, although Bojack himself executed constantly without question, and although it was the normal for society and had nothing to do with him, still felt a chipping away at his subconscious of whatever energy or fruitfulness he had for the day. His head ducked as he turned his eyes to the light as it changed, then started up the car against as he drove through the intersection and over to downtown Los Angeles; it was busier than what he had seen on the news that came along with the fair that day, and he gave a grunt of a quick rasp of a breath as his eyes winced with aggravation as he gave a grunt.

"Point is, again, is that I want to do anything I can to get her to get the idea and leave this place alone. She puts a certain beggars dirtiness to the place that I'm not especially interested in entertaining, and it would be incredible if I had even one reason to scare her off. She seems like an alchcolic; eyes light up whenever these big dirty men, sometimes celebrities or people who just look like they have money, come around and start waving it in front of her; obvious the little shit can't resist. She's like a little play thing and a lost child that lost her way or her navigation a long time ago, and there's no timeline left except for whatever little animalistic survival she has left inside of her."

"I am not using my empty bottles to try and manipulate her into doing something weird." Bojack's eyes were lowered and his words exasperated, his emotional intelligence causing him to keep up with the man and his intensions more than the man had expected. He heard a wheeze come from the other end of the phone, and then a quick cough; Bojakc winced in further annoyance, which then turned to emptiness as he turned his eyes to the phone, considering halfway if he wouldn't be happier calling someone else now that there was a stack of baggage of request to what he hoped would be a simple request.

"No, no. Nothing weird. Not even asking you to be involved; not really. I just want you to make sure that she very clearly sees the vodka when you bring it in. Flash it, show it off on the side of your body, maybe even walk past her. Obviously I didn't mean that you had to directly talk to the woman-I meant what I said when I said that people don't want to have anything to do with people that low. Got that way for a reason, whether man or woman, and the only thing left is for them to ease themselves out into the grim of their life. Harsh, maybe-but what they asked for is centered everywhere. No one ends up like that for a reason, and if you're any kind of believer in cosmetic justice-"

"Hey, man." Bojack's eyes lowered as he began to drive through the street again, and the lowering of his exasperated and empty eyes continued along with the pain he naturally had with te state of his interactions and of the intentions of humanity in general that chopped him down daily for reasons beyond his understanding; it didn't directly concern him, nor did he on the surface felt as if he especially cared, but there was a vague sense of static insanity that followed him daily from what he obsebred from people and their superfifciality, even as he played a part and had long convinced himself that there was no other way to be or fucnton in life. "Let's keep this favor by favor simple, alright? Do you want me to pass by her, flash the things in her face-or is this more of a casual mocking and flash and trash hoping she sees it out of my pocket thing?"

"Wait-so you'll do it?"

Bojack flicked his eyes up in annoyance, but his fingers gripped against the wheel further.

"It's not a huge dedication anyway." His worn eyes turned to the side of the bag that rested on the edge of the driver's headrest. "If I have to drive all the way over there for something as ridiculous as having to throw out a lifetime of a certain lifestyle as boring as drinking alcohol, I may as well make sure there's multiple stories that come out of it."

"Oh." The mole man gave a vague chuckle of relief, and Bojack winced as his eyes turned down to the speaker. "Thank god. Thank you. You know, when these woman with their dirty grim come around and start meddling around the area-"

"I get it. You don't want her around." Bojack tapped his fingertips against the wheel as he gave a shrug of his shoulders. "You don't have to make a big thing about it. I'll just flash the damn bottles in her direction-" His eyes winced in thought as his hands gripped on the wheel. "Are you even sure she's even into alcohol like that?"

"She's homeless. I know that she'll take any relief she can get. Living on the verge like that-well, let's say that I know that look when I see it. She'll take anything she can get. It's the way it is with people like that. No one is unique enough that they can get away with their natural needs, especially if they're foolish enough to end up in the situations they're in to begin with. I have it that she'll end up seeing the bottles and either leaving the area to go find something similar somewhere else, or she'll end up trying to buy some around here People like her, they're like these little blimps of life that come and go and cross over life, as small as they come, miserable and dim of light, and then they snuff out with their life beyond recall. I suppose it's a good thing, the fact that they fall into the indifference of death and beyond awareness. People like that, the small little snuffs of reality of come and go from their small finite existence and then leave beyond recall-they're like the fluff of life of the way things are."

Bojack's eyes winced further as his ears lowered, his fingertips gripping further on the wheel, muggy thought crossing over his features as his eyes turned over to the crowd that was forming in downtown Los Angeles. There was a particularly large burst of color from the outfits of the people that were crossing the street; there was enough people in the thick throng of the crowd that Bojack's face treamored into a vague disgust as he abruptly stopped the car in front of the people crossing the street. He gave a slight grunt of a quick intake of a grump of a breath as his arms abruplty found on the dievr's wheel while he winced over with a jaded flair over to the crowd that was crossing in front of the street. He paused as his ears flicked back while he pressed his foot on the gas pedal. He ducked hs head downward and over the crows that made up the downtown fair; his eyes turned over to where he saw, a few buildings down, the convenience store, as unimpressive and a dirty and grimy as much as Bojakc would have guessed for a place he had only ever seen in passing photos. His head turned back up as the muscles on his face furrowed as he pressed his foot on the gas and over the crowd of the people that were walking their way across the street, the bright colors and the burst of the party decor they had in their hands gripping against the palms of kids and older people while they crossed through the street.

"Well, whatever she's doing on a day like today, she has plenty of options. Not sure why she would spend too much time near a convenience store unless she had the idea that her being around the area and promoting the idea of the dirty grim of your business would benefit her in some way."

"I know that you might think that my place isn't the best. But I'm trying to keep the place white, cleaned up, best as I'm able. I only rented the place a couple of weeks ago. I'm still getting the place cleaned up, clear."

"Got it." Bojack's eyes hardened as he pulled the car forward through the crowd that had passed by, and that stogit feeling of emptiness was still in him, though the edge of exhaustion of being around the life around him and the chaos of the world and of people that was full of life that he couldn't have felt more detached by as he drove the car through the intersection. He turned the wheel over into the small cracked road that turned to a sharp right on the other side of the street while he passed his way through the cracked road, wincing as he turned into the parking lot beside the station. He turned sharply and over in front of the stain of the cracked bricks and the yellow stain of the wall as he reached forward and pressed his hand on the key, grimacing as he pulled the key out and pressed it inside of his pocket of the grey hangover he had pulled over his shoulders for the sake of keeping himself hidden from any quick perception he could have been granted when he passed by any sudden reflection of the day. He winced as he leaned forward and gripped his hand on the trash bag, turning his body back over to the car door as he shouldered his elbow against it and walked his way out, other hand gripped firmly on the trashbag as he stumbled his way out the car. His eyes lowered as he looked over the other side of the street; for the time being was there nothing but the other low quality and cracked building beside Bojack's expression. He grunted as he gripped his hand on the trash bag and made his way to the station, taking his other hand on the phone while he threw it into the same pocket.

"You might want to rethink about what you worry about when it comes to keeping his place upright." His hand gripped onto the trash bag as he threw it onto the counter. The mole man blinked as he stepped back; his eyes had been clouded over by the mundane fog in his eyes a moment previously from where he had leaned over the cashier. His mouth was askew as he turned his head to the trasbag.

"She's not even outside." Bojack's head indicated towards the door where he had come in a moment before. "Though if you wanted to find your niche audience, it would probably be for people like me, who are trying to figure out how they can go about doing their mundane chores every day without being subjected to the large white colored flowered bullshit people call mindless celebration going on out there."

The mole man turned his eyes to the bag Bojack had placed on the counter with a grunt. His hands cramped on his palms as he turned his hand forward, palms turning onto the bag as he eased his hands against the material. Bojack winced as his expression grimanced while he pressed his hand on the ache of his back. The mole man's small slitted eyes turned up and met Bojack's for a moment, unreadable but analytic, and then content as his hand reached forward and gripped onto the trash and pulled it over.

"Maybe she decided to leave anyway with or without your genius schemes." Bojack's eyes lowered as he continued to rub his hand on the middle part of his back, giving the mole man both a look of enocurgament whil at the same time his usual dryness.

"Well, it didn't hurt to at least try to make a plan." The mole man's eyes turned down to the bag as he gripped his hand on it, opening it up as the bottles clashed against one another, and he gave a shrug as he took one of the large bottles out and handed it to Bojack. Bojack stepped back as he winced while his eyes turned over the bottle as the mole man handed the bottle to him; Bojack's eyes flicked up as he looked at the mole man in hard bewilderment.

"I'm sorry, I think there's some confusion. I came here to get rid of the bottles." Bojack's eyes lowered in dry detachment. The mole man's eyes turned down to the bottle as he shook it, and then turned his head curtly to the door as he shook the bottle to Bojack.

"Can you just walk around, see if you come into contact with her? Make sure it's clear that she's gone and if not, try to see if you can scare her away with a little bargain. There's no better way of trying to keep people like that away than to smuggle the with their addictions."

Bojack's hard eyes turned to the bottle dangling in the man's grasp, and he rolled his eyes up as he gave a quick rasp of exasperation while he reached his hand forward and gripped onto the bottle. He took it to his chest as he mole man gave him a quick small raise of his lip, timid but full of gratitude.

"And you're sure that she even has these kind of struggles that would make her want to be interested in this kind of thing to begin with?" Bojack's eyes were hardened with a layer of detachment, but he reached forward with a grunt as he pressed his hand on the bottle of the neck of the vodka, turning his hard eyes to the door as he did so. He waved his free hand up in a mocking gesture as he spoke dryily; "You do realize that she's not here, right?"

"Everyone has-"

"-Everyone has something, I get it." Bojack's hand gripped on the neck of the bottle as he turned his head over his shoulder to where there was nothing but empty space and cracked walls with the grim of yellow against the walls. "I'm going to search around, see what I can get for my next black out." He snapped his finger in front of the mole man as he turned his stout body to the glasses of liquor in front of the window. "Then I will go out and try to take care of your stupid plan."

"Whatever works." The mole man nodded, and the genuine gratitude in his eyes as his palms played together was almost enough to make Bojack feel a pause of something almost vaguely full of his own appreciation for the matter as he made his way to the shelves. "Just-thank you, entirely, for all of this. You never know when a business could turn things around."

"Sure thing, buddy." Bojack's eyes, executed by the deep cut of the exhaustion of his expression and the wrinkles under his eyes turned down to the bottles that rest in front of the window. Though his headspace was already muddled and foggy just from trying to recover from the night before and his stomach cramped just at the look of the alcohol that he had memorized just from that yellow stained look and the brown grim of the whiskey square bottles in front of him, he kneeled down in front of the bottle that met his eyes as he eased his thighs down in front of the words.

"Whisky Barn." He drew out the words in a cocky manner and in that heated ass genre of a way as his eyelids lowered in satisfaction. "There you are. I was hoping I would meet you in the middle of this stupid long dirty chore."

His hand came to grip around the neck of the bottle as he lifted the heaviness of the glass and into the cart. His eyes, heavy and as worn as they were continued to look over through the blur of the bottles in front of the searching of his eyes, both lowered into a cocky navigation while having that empty vacant void in them. His eyes turned up as he looked over and out to the window again, half subconscious to check for the same dirty and pale body that had been mentioned; his curiotry could have been one of a random sexual interval nature, or it could have been one of someone who was halfway curious about even acknowledgingt he devoid; like most, Bojack had gone throughout his life seeing the dirty and decrepit and not even second guessing passing them by, and like most, he either hadn't thought about it much, or had found it justified; one of the countless reasons why the part of him that was more buried and tender felt was aware of the separation he was giving himself from anything remarkable or profound, it seemed like the only route he could ever take.

His dry eyes turned over the neck of the bottles as his focus turned up to the window, his other hand going to complacely grip onto the neck of the nxt bottle of clear vodka. His eyes turned up as he focus on the same place where he expected to see nothing but the white wall and the stain of the yellow on it again; what met his vision was a sudden breeze of white rags, dirty pale skin, and a forgettale face under a grim of dirt that as thrashed across your face. Your head was turned down, the friziness of your hair splayed out into an entanglement of your hair as it spewed out and around your head, your expression lowered downward as your palms were pressed on the side of your arms and your chest turned down.

"Oh." Bojack's tone was one of both a tender surprise and a sudden edge of surprise as his eyes widened, body clumsy sitting upward as his body turned back ont his thighs. His hands turned back as he let otu a clumsy yell while his eyes widned as he reched out over to the bottles to try and give himself balance; his eyes winced as he gave an abrupt swear as his hands tried to grip on the bottle as he tired to pull himself forward from the balance of pressing on it with his hand alone, but instead was there was a shattering of the glass on each side of the bottles while he gave another swear as he tried to ease himself back up, the bottle he was gripping onto crashed one side of the bottle onto the other, and Bojack's eyes winced as he gave an abrupt timid swear while he watched the glass crack against each other, until finally, with an especially large hit of one glass onto the other did he release the glass and it crashed onto the floor.

Bojack snapped his body up as he lifted one lef up as he looked down timidly with his hands cramping on his chest, eyes turning over the glass as he watched the broken glass shatter on the ground while his hands cramped on his chest. His ears flew back, btu the sudden abrupt swears that ame from the mole man as he bumbled his large body across the counter as stumbled his way to the broken glass fell into a foggy backdrop as his eyes snapped over to the other side of the road. The long and slender form of your body as it was walking across the front of the grimy stained wall, your head turned back and your palm eased against the side of your pale face. Your eyes were closed, and whatever beauty or allure Bojack would have usually instantly taken to impulsively turning your existence into a fixation was immediately overtaken by the grim and the wear of your hollowed features, the rags on your body spoken of someone who had taken decisions or a road to somewhere that was far from anything notable to the usual passing by of human life.

Your eyes turned up, and your expression turned across the street and over to the window. There was a ringing in Bojack's ears as he saw the gentleness in your eyes, inhuman and a wretched and as worn and red edged as they were while they turned across the street. There was something motherly about the emotion in them; your lips were parted in an inch as your eyes snapped over to the other side of the street; there was a lostness and a detachment in your pupils as your expression turned across the street. Your eyes turned minutely across the street as your expression turned across the street, and though there was an innate lostness to them and a sense of chaos to the foggy detachment in your eyes, there was just as much something that insulated a sense of focus that narrowed down the baggage of the chaos surrounding the day.

"And I want you to make sure you make this something that the place of us can get something out of so that we can both leave this shit hole of a routine behind for a long time, understand? You got about five hundred that you have to pay off right here just from the bottles that you broke, and though I wouldn't be able to tell from the look of it, I know you have plenty to go by, so I don't want to hear any talking back!"

Bojack's hands were cramped on his chest timidly as his eyes darted down to where the mole man was raising himself up from where he had swept the broken liquor bottles into a smash of glass on the floor; Bojack's ears flew back as his hands gripped on his chest while his eyes turned over him as he came back to reality, though the fog in his headspace and the want of following your eyes didn't leave him as his eyes flashed back up to your direction.

"I'm sorry, what?" His eyes turned over to the mole man as he gave a quick huff of a heavy breath, rolling his body forward as he stood himself upright in front of Bojack. Whatever politeness was in his headspace was now gone into an abrasive detachment while his eyes snapped over Bojack, who kept his ears lowered back as he looked over the man with a wince.

"You take all this shit, the bottles you broke, and take it out over to that worthless waste of a woman otu there. She's got the kind of energy just bad enough to take gripping on other dirty nothings like that that are just barley on the verge of life. She needs to realize how little of a reason she has to be here, how little energy she has or should have or how little she's even living and why she dosen't need to fight to survive." The mole man's expression grimanced as he threw the bag and shoved it into Bojack's chest; Bojack's eyes flew downward as his hands tentidvetly gripped on the bag, his eyes dim as he turned his hands against it while his teeth poked. "And you're paying for all the shit you broke. Just because you think everything gets to be your own personal playground doesn't mean you get to act like it."

"She seems-like she actually has a certain life about her. An energy. Not unlike the other homeless people I would expect to see around here."

The mole man shoved the broken glass onto Bojack's chest as he gave an abrupt grunt, and Bojack winced as he gave a swear and turned to the man with his eyes lowered into a grim bleak look of his eyes, his feet stepped back as he looked over at him with his expression lowered.

"Hey-"

"Why don't you go out and compliment her, then?" The mole man's eyes flashed out over to the door. "And make sure you pay for the goddamn liquor."

"Yeah, I'll pay for it. I'm sorry. It was an accident." Bojack's voice was edged as he balanced the broken glass that was shoved into his chest while he tried to ignore the jabbing of it; his eyes turned over to the window wher eyou stood by the wall. Your head turned back while your hands kept gripped on the sides of your arm as you began to walk down the street again; Bojack tripped over his feet as he began to walk over to the front of the door as he kept his palms balanced on the box while he turned and looked over to the mole man. "And you can cool it with the attitude. I get where you're trying to come from with the heat and the anger, but I'll pay you all this and a bit more than you would normally get on an average day. You're welcome."

The mole man's eyes flashed, the dirt and grim of the floor, muddy white, and the grim of the dirt flashed on his pants as he bundled over on his hips as he turned and lookd over at Bojack with a flair in his eyes. His expression turned heated over to the window, and there was a new intent maddneing look on the focus of his eyes as he began to bumble his way out and over to the window; the small glint of his eyes flashed across the door as he turned and saw the way you were pacing with your body turned back.

"Be careful when you try to get her to leave. These types, they'll try to grip onto any value their life can give them; anything they can try to grip their hands and fingers onto to make their life feel valuable."

Bojack's eyes became dry and devoid, and he readjusted the hill of broken glass in the bag on his chest while he looked down at him with his ears lowered back. His eyes flicked to the side in casual detachment while he stepped forward to the door clumsly.

"Well, with the company she's had around her lately, it's probably more than likely that she's already used to the lack of expectation."

"Look, Bojack-I feel for the woman. As much as anyone can. I don't have much value or quality in my own life, either-I promise you. People like us, we never got to the part where we had even one thing that was worthwhile or amazing or profound; we're just fodder for pur existence ad have to curve out anything human or remarkable daily." His hands gripped onto the collar of his work shirt as his eyes turned up timidly to Bojack, who's hand was pressing on the front of the door with his eyes dimmed and lowered as he began to make the way to exit outside; the dry of his emotion turned to the mole man as he kept his eyes on him in that timid insistence while the mole man looked at him with desperation. "I know that I seem crude, but I'm just speaking how it is. Existence, the way humanity is, we're just forgettable buildings blocks that take whatever small minute blessings that we can get, or we die-we settle for the fact that we don't prove ourselves remarkable enough not to get blown around by the world every day, and whatever blessings we do get we have to settle for. This stupid, small little business that is your ditry punchline today is more than likley my entire blessing in life." The lowering of his own busy and compact eyes snapped over to where your hand was reached out beside the wall; you were taking to swaying now, your hand gripped onto the rags that were enfolded onto your hand as you turnd your expression downward, swaying your body as you did so. Bojack's worn expression was turned over to the side of the street, and had he been aware of it, there was a somber look on his eyes as his expression glinted with melchcony over to the other side of the street. His ears flicked back as his eyes lowered as he stepped his way back inward. The mole man gripped the side of his black toruses, which were dusted from the unremarkbailoty of the day as his hands gripped against them. Bojack's eyes turned against him as he saw the way the mole man shook his palm against his trousers while he snapped his eyes back up to Bojack in the wet of his insistence of his emotional eyes.

"Please, no matter what, just make sure that you keep the woman away from the idea that there's anything to take here. Take one look at me and tell me you don't see someone who's less than nothing, being swept through a system that's telling him he's not capable or worthy of great or remarkable things, that I didn't try everything I could." His small eyes turned over Bojack, and he stepepd forward as he reached out a hand to place on Bojack's shoulder; though Bojack's eyes darted down for a moment in uncerinity, he allowed the mole man to reach out his hand and grip on his shoulder as his palms squeezed his shoulder. "Bojack, I'm asking as someone who is lower than you who can just keep two breaking building blocks away from harming and destorying one another. I just want a decent go at this. Can we do that?"

"I get it." Bojack's voice was somber as his chubby shoulder began to detach from the mole man; there was a somber tone to his voice that acknowledged the depth of the situation now. His air was one of someone more present and considerate as his eyes wincd while he turned his head back to the door; he rolled his shoulders as he stepped over his feet and began to shoulder his way outside. He turned over to the glass door just as it was about to close, stepping his foot out to prevent it from closing entirley.

"I'll let you know what she says. Unless you want to watch the etire theatre department from inside of here."

The mole man's eyes lowered, and his head turned over his shoulder as he looked over the broken glass that lied on the floor. His small eyes turned back up onto Bojack's eyes as he gave him a small minute glare.

"Pay up front would be the most reasonable at this point."

Bojack rolled up his eyes, but more in an exhausted and tired way.

"Yeah, sure."

He reset as he placed the boxes onto the ground, grunting while he took the weight off his hands and began to raise his body upward, turning his worn face over to his pocket as he threaded his fingertips through several dollar bills. He setepped forward and handed it to the mole man, turning his arm out as he spoke;

"Make sure that you're wise about he money. You never know when something needs ezra fix-"

"She's walking away!" The mole man hissed as he gripped his hand on the money and tore it out of Bojack's palm. Bojack's head snapped over his shoulder as his eyes took on a dialtd panic while his hed snapped over his shoulder, more concern on his face than there should have been for a passing by interaction.

"Wha?"

"Please, get her to see the goddamn vodka. I'll even pour some in myelf if you want." The mole man gripped his hands on the money as he stepped back. "And no matter what, don't bother trying to appease the woman. She probably had potential a long time ago, but she's become a less than quality woman now, and they'll grip onto any sense of identity you give them, Bojack. Don't let their worthlessness pull you down. Worthlessness is the default in life, which is why so many people are. Don't let yourself be pulled down."

"What do you want me to say?" Bojack's voice sounded almost viticmatic, his tone tender and concerned a shis eyes snapped over to the mole man. He offered hima flash of his heated eyes as his hand gripped on the side of the door as he stepepd back and into the shelevs.

"Tell her to get the fuck out of my busnesss yard. And the next time you come and break things, make sure that you give a warning. You're lucky you have the money to come around and remedy stuff like this to begin with, or you would be on the same roundabout as her."

"Terrile." Bojack managed to recollect a sense of some control as he made his way to the bag with the plastic bottles and the borken glass, wicning as he felt the dampy and unimpressive feeling of the liquor meet on his palms as he got himself upward. He stepped over to the side of the street, turning his head over his shoulder as he offered the man another glint of his eyes. "I'll see you in a day, then. When I'm done drinking the alchcolc from the main place I usually get it and need to drop that shit of again, too."

"Please talk to the woman, Horseman."

The mole man slammed his hand on the door, his eyes hard as he gripped his hand on the lock and shit it as the bell finished ringing while he gripped it with his palm. Bojack tried to redjust his balance as much as he was able as he took another breath to reset, and he turned as he looked over to where, for now, you form had disappeared on the other side of the corner of the piss stained building.

Bojack snapped his eyes down as he gave them a close, pressing his fingertips onto his snout while he tried to calm to rushing through his senses. His eyes turned up as he looked over to where your body was crossing around the wall, our air despondent and your body detached while you walked around the corner. His eyes turned down to the bag as he crumpled it in his hand, gripping his palm on the garbage bag while he lifted it up in his arms, giving a wince as he began to walk across the street. He grunted while he balanced the feeling of the glass in his hand, giving out sharp breaths through the feeling of the sharp shard of the glass while he tried to readjust his embrace around the plastic bottle as he tipped over his feet and walked over to where your body had disappeared. He tripped through the weight of the bag, turning his body around the corner as he turned his eyes over to the sidewalk, his eyes wincing and burning, but already was he searching for where you were.

His ears flicked up as he caught sight of your body; you were walking down the side of the wall while your hands kept detached from the yellow stains of the broken down bricks. Your head was turning up to the street now and then, your eyes turning vacant across the street, your feet and their placement uncertain as you stepped forward to the road, and then turned back, the bare soles of the dirt on your skin turning over into a vague dusted muddiess that was pressed agaisnt your skin, your eyes turning over the street, your face cracked and worn and executing everything Bojack would have ever taken to belittling and looking over, had he been given the chance.

He took a breath as he tried to dissipate the tension from his body as his eyes lowered in their complacent dryness, and he rolled his shoulders as he tried to straghten up the ache of his body while his eyes turned over to your form, unstable as your body swayed. He turend his tired eyes up, wincing as he looked over to the pollueted grey sky, and then took to nervous attempt at a grin as he walked his way forward, expression nervous and a nerous grin flashing across his feautres as he walked his way forward.

"Hey." His large sqaure teeth flashed out in front of his expression as he offered you a nervous grin, expression timid as his expression turned over your disassicaoted and foggy air. Your eyes were unfocused and seemed unaware of the fact that he was speaking to you. The soles of your feet stepped forward onto te street, then stepped back, your body swaying, that unfocused detachement dressed around your air. Bojack's expression filtered down as his eyes lowered further, and he gave a weight of a slight groan as he placed the plastic bottle and the cut up glass down in front of him.

"I know this is porbably something that wasn't on both of our agendas tonight-but. For the sake of letting you know what's going on around here, and for getting this guy out of both of our hairs." He leaned his plush body downward while the trash bag sat lazily on the sidewalk. His expression grimanced as he opened the bag and began to sort through the plastic material, heavy eyes turned down as he began to sort through the glass, getting a slight low rasped swear when he felt the edge of his skin cut against the glass, wincing as he did so while his eyes turned over to the cut of the material. He pressed his thumb to his lip as he felt his eyes lower down and back to where the empty plastic bottle of vodka lied in the middle of the shards of glass. His expression lowered as he managed to push the rest of the glass away as much as he was able and reached for the bottle, gripping his palm on the neck of it and turned his eyes up to you as he lifted it out of the bag, showing it to you tentatively.

Your body was still hafl frozen on the side of the walkway that would cross over the street, but your disposition froze as you began to pick up on the fact that the low grovel tone of Bojack was talking to you, with the insistence and the slight edge of a tired emotion in his voice. Your head turned down, and then slowly, as much as the dirty grim of your skin, clothes and body would allow you to did you turn your eyes over your shoulder, looking especially detached from reality and disassociated with your hand crumpled in the rags of your dress. Your eyed were edged, the emotion in them detached and exhausted, and it was only then that Bojack could see the true wear that made up the stretch of your skin on your features; any beauty or allure he would have normally gripped onto for the sake of having anything to grip onto for the day at all was temporary overcome by the shock he felt from the amount of how little there was anything of any health or well being across your features, and how there was even less recognition of anything especially notable of attraction, if only for the amount of dirt and grim and sickliness across your features. There were some cuts of significant wrinkles that rested on your forehead; they sunk into the pale cut of your paper skin as your eyes gazed over at him and over your shoulder, dressed in strung over and ripped rags.

"You don't have to take it if you don't want." Bojack winced as he felt the ache of his bones while he sat down, easing his body onto the side of the street as he detached eyes looked over the front of the neck of the bottle that rested in the edge of his palm. He turned his head over his shoulder as he delicately balanced it across his palm while turning it back over to where you stood against the street, the one hand not dedicated to gripping onto the rags occupied by turning over to Bojack as your eyes turned across his body. He leaned himself forward while he when to sit on the edge of the curve of the street, expression lowering as he turned the bottle in his hand despondently.

"That guy over there is practically begging for me to pretend like trying to pursue you with some addiction that he thinks you have because he thinks it'll help his dumb business." He winced as he turned his eyes over to the bottle, giving a visible breath as he turned his eyes over the bottle. He turned his eyes back up to you as he handed you the bottle, turning it in his hand as your eyes eased over the front of it. "Just take it, if you're not interested in having it. If nothing else, it'll make the guy a little bit friendly the next time I come around. And what you get out of it is not having to worry about coming around here anymore, because I came over here to do you the favor of letting you know that guy is a complete hacket job, and he's going out of his way to make sure that he can use you as his own personal prop as an excuse as to why his business isn't going anywhere."

Your expression was still fogged over and bewildered; it was almost enough to make Bojack feel frustrated this time around as his eyes lowered while he looked you over. He leaned his body back against the back of the street while he rested the weight of his body against his arm, the dry exhaustion in his eyes and the wear on his bloated face, giving away something far less than anything attractive as he let his stomtahc poke out from the shrug he had placed across his shoulders; he didn't care much for anything these days or the way it was executed, and there was a subcicnious feeling he was picking up on that you weren't especially taken by any amount of performance regardless.

"Please, just take the damn thing." His eyes winced as he turned his head over his shoulder, turning over from the sidewalk as he looked over to the small dirty building that sat a couple of stumbled and frustrated paces away. Bojack's eyes winced as his eyes turned over to where the building was sitting in the middle of the street, showing off his own timid uncertainty that he carried. "If you don't want to, then at least let me pretend I gave it to you. We can both walk across the street with our heads down, I'll put it in your…rags." His eyees turned back over to you as his eyes roamed over your body. You turned your head down, gripping your hands on the side of the white crumple of the rags on your palm as you turned your head downward. "And when we're out of sight I'll throw it out and tell him that you told me you got the idea. How does that sound?"

Your eyes turned down and over to the cope of the rags that was in your palm that your hand was gripped around, and Bojack winced as he saw the dirtiness of your expression fully form across your skin, though he could take in the vague sense that there was an attractive woman underneath the grim that made up your days. Your eyes fluttered back up to him as your expression met his own, and as Bojack kept his body leaned back on the edge of the sidewalk, with his eyes turnd up to you in insistence, increasing in his usual sense of his true timid apology while his eyes turned across your features, he began to pick up on the sense of you being someone who was fogged into that lack of comprehension that came along with someone who's immediate recognizable humanity, or of any response to it, was taken over by whatever survival you had been inside of so deeply that you were detached from everything around you.

"Ok." Bojack closed his eyes as the muscles on his face treamored, and he gradually began to raise himself up from the side of the sidewalk as his eyes, heavy with his bags and lowered with the wear of his bad conumsption was eased from the edge of the sidewalk. He turned his head up to you as he staggered himself forward, easing the bottle over to your body. "Take the thing and I'll throw it out on the other side." His ears flicked back as that pathetic uncertain emotion eased across his expression as his eyes darted down in thought. "Really, it's just something to make the future easier for you." He snapped his arm in front of him in a gesture while his eyes turned up to you. "You do not want to have to worry about that guy in the future. He is not a walk in the park, and believe me, even someone like…you could do better than in an area like this."

Your eyes turned down and over to the bottle that he had gripped by the neck, and his uncertain timid wince turned across his eyes as his expression turned over your body. Your eyes lowered down, half hidden by the spewing out of your detached and disgruntled hair as your expression turned over the bottle that was rung by the neck of his palm as your eyes turned over to the bottle.

"It's hard to move."

Bojack winced, and this time there was more insult to the sentiment than there was anything other than that pathetic insult that he carried in that pathetic humanity he kept with him. "What?"

Your eyes turned up, meeting on Bojack's as he looked at you with a raise of his brow.

"When you feel as terrible as I do, and every day, you get to the point where it's hard to even move; like it's an admittance of the fact that you're still here, in your situation, as yourself, in this reality, and with the admittance that you're still in an agreement, in a sense, with your situation."

Bojack's eyes flickered up to the sky, part in bewilderment, part in thought. "Uh-ok." His expression lowered as he looked over at you. "I am sorry to hear that."

Your eyes turned fully over to the bag now, and your eyes flicked up and over to his for only a moment; there was a certain strike to them, even in their pathetic and worn and desperate uncerinity, that inspired something in him that was both meaningful and painful enough that he could feel how he wa going to have certain echos of the sentiment of the emotion following him into the upcoming days the next moment that he was alone for long periods and stretches of time.

"I'm sorry, too." You cleared your throat, your lip turned up into a vague pout as you began to come back to yourself for a moment. Bojack's eyes rasied up as he watched you in vague surprise at the amount of the sudden clarity you were exhibiting as your eyes turned over to the bottle in his hand. Your eyes flicked back up to Bojack; the sentiment a bit awkward, but still with the same intention of what Bojack felt with you trying to collect yourself as your eyes turned up and met his, emotion flittered and broken as the muscles on your face scrunched in question while your eyes turned over his body. "Do you drink?"

"Oh, me? Oh, uhm. Well." He stepped back in a natural instinct, his eyes procrastinating on meeting yours as he turned his eyes to the bag. His ears flicked down further, and though there was no genuine inustion that came along with any attempt on either side, there was a feeling of a natural sense of emotional intelligence and understanding that added an especially intense feeling of understanding and insight that the both of you were aware of; for Bojack's usual muggy and foggy way that he went about his day with a completely sense of detachment from anything around him, especially in conversation, he felt an astounding amount of refreshment in small minute ways that he had never thought existed, much less to have the amount of notability now. "I mean, a drink now and then, sure. Just…something to take the edge off every now and then."

He was lifting the bag with one hand now, awkwardly placed in his palm, and the other came to scratch on his neck as he kept his eyes darted away for the sake of his own comfortability. Your hands were gripped on the side of your arm as you kept your body swayed by the side of the edge of the sidewalk, and though the entire conversation had been with you looking at him over your shoulder with the red burning of your sickly eyes turned across his body, there seemed to be something that changed in you as you turned your body over to him now fully. Bojack winced further until his vision was a slit as he felt the lie leave his mouth, the leftover combination of vodka and gin still kept in his mouth in a dry, complacent feeling against his mouth as he kept his eyes turned away from you while you began to step forward.

"I'll take it." Your tone was low and weak, and Bojack's eyes turned up in something more present as he turned his head over to you. Your hand reached out over to the bag, giving him a nod as your fingers pressed around the plastic bah.

"Oh." His ears flicked up, and his eyes darted down as he stepped back and looked over at you, and vaguely did a small raise of his lip raise up on his snout as a present gleam of apprecation meet in his eyes. "Ok. Good. Good."

He paused as he watched you take the bag out of his hand, your palms turning against the bag as you turned the plastic into your palms while you turned your eyes down and to the open bag.

"The bottle should go with it, too." Bojack's tone was apologetic as he stepped forward, and your head turned up to meet his eyes as he stumbled his way to the bag and placed the bottle inside of it. There was a gentle apology and somber grace to his tone as he placed the bottle inside of the broken glass with a soft grunt, and a gentleness eased into his eyes, though mostly it was one of an odd shameful apology. There was a soft tender grunt to his tone as he placed the bottle inside, awkward, but having the emotional grace of someone who was tender at their core. He winced as he placed it in, keeping his eyes focused on the bottle more than on your eyes; anything was better than having to meet anything that made him feel emotionally uncomfortable. His ears lwoered as he stepped his way back, getting flashes of he emptiness of his life and of the pathetic outward perspective he would have as soon as he got home. His eyes lowered as he stepped his way back. Your hand curled on the plastic bag, and you sighed as you heaved your shoulders inward, turning it back on your chest.

"Do you drink?" The question came out before Bojack was even aware that he had thought of it or that he wanted to speak it; his eyes turned up as he met on your expression as you turned your hand on the edge of the plastic bag.

"Sorry. That was a..dumb question." His hand scratched the back of his mane as he looked down in awkward thought, then waved hand hand back to you in an attempt to disassued the awkward nature he felt as he tried. "What I meant to say was, is the guy right in his personality stereotyping that you would be easily swayed by this kind of…fluid? Is that a good way of putting it?"

"I can't afford it."

"Oh." Bojack's hand came to rub on his arm as he looked downward. "Well, that's ok, right? Keeps you out of trouble, at least." An awkward timid look of attempting to be casual crossed over his features as he added, "Honestly, all things considered, you're probably better off than most of us."

"I said I can't afford it, not that I didn't drink." You readjusted your hand on the bag as you turned up to gaze at him, a vague causal humor in your eyes, though mostly there was just humored and sickly exhaustion. "You would be surprised at how many men come along and trade in for my intercourse for their new liquor."

"You say I would be surprised, but-no, I wouldn't." His eyes lowered as he looked over at you with his eyes lowered into a dry maturity. His eyes eased across your body while he looked over the crumpled frump of your dress.

"Well." You indicated the bag upward; it seemed just heavy enough that it looked pitable that you had to carry it, and light enough that it wasn't completely surprising or inappropriate when you said, "I guess I'll take it with me with where I'm going and throw it in the garbage can and be on my way, then."

"Well-wait. All by yourself? And like this?" Even Bojack was surprised at the amount of how he suddenly leapt on the opportunity just before you turned around fully; your eyes blinked as your turned your attention back over to him just as he had his hands raised while he looked over at you in an aburpt begging that crossed against sudden vulnerable eyes. "I mean, it dosen't have to be a big deal, obviously." He shrugged as he waved his hands in front of him, awkward, but insistent. He poined over his shoulder to where his car was parked. "You shouldn't have to carry that thing around all by yourself. My car is behind the station a couple of feet away. I could-drive you? It would only be fair, since I did come around and try to get you to do this all by yourself, and all."

His fingertips rested by his wrists as he finished speaking, his eyes lowering as he pouted. Your body turned fully, both hands coming to rest by the trash bag as you looked him over.

"The proper dumpster is only a few miles away." His eyelids lowered as he snapped his finger at you. "Plus, you can get a free ride to wherever you want to go. Does that sound-" He scratched the back of his neck as he gazed at you in concern. "-Like something that's ok with you?"

"You're sure about that?" You stepped forward, and your body was swaying; Bojack stepped forward a few steps now and then as his hand reached out to your body, his ears flew back as his teeth poked while a fear gently struck in his eyes as he watched how on edge you were.

"I mean, after everything that I've done you about and made you listen to? It would be weird if I didn't. Right?" His dispotion was one of something more timid and pathetic now as he gazed at you with insistence. Your eyes lowered as your hands readjusted on the bag, and your eyes turned up as you met on the insistence of his, his fingertips playing on his wrist as he watched you with a pout across his features.

Your lip raised up; it was something more bewildered and muddled than it was of genuine and satisfying connection and commucnaition, but there was a spark of clairty in your eyes as your lips raised up and met across his eyes.

"I'll do as much as you're willing to give me." You stepped forward, your steps awkward and uncertain, but there was a vague focus to them as you walked your way over to Bojack, who both stepped forward and had a look of want of desire to help you at the same time. "I've almost forgotten what it feels like to be someone who is acknowledged by anyone. Most would say I don't deserve it."

"Well, we won't worry about that." Bojack's voice was tender, and almost more reassured than it had ever been as he walked his way forward. His fingertips eased across his wrist as he turned his eyes over the bag. His tone was almost kind, charming as his head tilted over to the bag in your hand, fingers playing nervously. "Do you want me to carry it? At least to the car. Obviously we'll have to put on a scene to appease that idiot, but once we jam that narrative into his head, we'll be all set. It's not too hard to try and convince people around here of what they want. It's usually just bulshit and delusion of some hope that's encased in the form of judgementt that makes them think for whatever reason that they'll get something out of it long term."

"I can try." You stepped forward, both hands gripped on the bag in a way that was almost cartoonish as you lifted it up on your hand as you began to walk forward. It was almost cartoonish and pathetic in a lovable way, and Bojack's eyes darted across your body as he gave a wince while his hands cramped on his chest as you watched you walk forward. You tripped an inch and collected yourself quickly in the contrast of the bag that was almost as big as your body, but it was enough for Bojack to feel a vague quick stretch of an abrasive moment as he leaned his arms forward and pressed his hand on the same bag where yours was.

"No. You don't have to try. I suggested this, I'll take care of it. Here-"

His palms readjusted on your hand, and you allowed your grasp to ease away from the bag as your eyes turned up and met his eyes, hard and awkward in his disposition as he gave an abrupt breath that suggested his timidness around you. Your hands slipped out of his palms; they were warm, but not in a lukewarm way, but rather a full and present and intelligence comforting fashion. Your eyes met on his as he gave a grunt as pressed the bag on his palms as he grunted and threw it over his shoulder, turning his eyes to the dirty station as he gave a wince and a quick breath of a restart. He looked over and into the window; through the blue tint of the convenience store glass, Bojack could see the mole man lumbering around the area, though the small slits of his eyes were turned to the window now and then as he watched out and over through the glass.

"Looks like he's making it his project to make sure I 'behave' with his delusion of thinking you're the reason why the place is falling underground." He turned as he looked over at you with his head indicating towards the building, though there was just as much an uncertain timid apology across his pathetic uncertain features that were almost adorable in his humble humanity as he winced and turned his head to the station. "You can stay in the care. If he tries to ask or bring anything on, I'll try and talk him out of it. I know that guy has nothing but negative thoughts and subconscious little torments going on in his head all day sitting in that stagnant light box that he sits and rots in all day."

"I'll be alright. I deal with things similar to this and worse all the time. It's one of the parts of being on the road."

"Oh. Right." His eyes lowered as he gave a small shrug of his shoulder. "Sure."

"Your voice is sweet." You began to walk past Bojack; his eyes widened for only a minute moment as he watched you walked your way past him, head turned down as your palms gripped on your arms. The jolt in his emotion turned to its usual somber even dryness as he readjusted the bag on his shoulder, his eyes watching you timidly as he followed your form behind.

"I have never heard that one before. I've heard ass, disgusting, mildly tolerable on a good day. A terrible sex and a fling and not to mention the most gross than a woman says she's ever touched and her biggest regret. But I've never gotten sweet before."

"I mean it. It has a certain virtue and authenticity to it. A gentleness. Maybe the suggestion of one of the most pure things I've ever heard."

"Jesus. So many statements at the same time. I don't know if any known person in this town would agree with any of that. But I appreciate the sentiment. I think. If I could find any agreeable logic or reason in it."

"I guess I can't blame you for not taking my opinion as something to take seriously or of something of value."

"Well, no. I didn't mean it like that."

"It's alright. It would make more sense if you did mean it like that; God knows its true, and God knows I've heard worse."

Bojack's bottom lids raised up, puffy and pathetic and apologetic; and, as your head turned over your shoulder, vaguely more sharper than they had been before.

"You have. What kind of worse?"

"It doesn't matter"

"It dosen't?" He grimcaed as he turned his eyes to the bag, continuing to follow you down the sidewalk as he did so. "I think so."

You laughed, the sound both releasing and detached at the same time. Bojack's expresson became more pointed and conflicted as he spoke;

"I'm serious. Of course I want to know."

Your palm rubbed against your arm, but only for a moment, your fingertips tapping across your skin that suggested that you were playing along with, at least for a moment, the way Bojack was tripping along and following his own minute and almost boyish curiosities to distract him from the rest of the empty day ahead of him.

"Why?"

"Why? Well, we're in the car for the next couple of hours, to start."

"Wasn't it only a few minutes away?"

"It's-by the parade thing. Christ. I didn't think there had to be some panned out reason why I wanted to get to know you-or the weird shitty interactions you have with men. I just do."

You continued to walk forward without any response for a moment, your steps uncertain and uneven as you walked your way by the sidewalk, Bojack turning his tired eyes over to the glass over his back now and then, and the out of shape mold of his body turning into an occasional breath of a heavy reset now and then as he tried o ignore the jabbing of the glass against his back.

"I'm sorry. You don't need to talk about anything if you want. I imagine these kind of days are worse for you enough as it is."

"I don't know where to start, really, is more of the way of going about it." Your head turned as you looked over to the building, not only one run across the street away.

"No?"

"I actually wanted to stay here for a long while because it was one of the one places where I thought I could be safe for a little while. To not have to 'earn' anything to be alive, to be worthy or respect or even not having to worry about being killed. That I could just be here, something you don't get unless you're a certain kind of person. And I'm not even the kind of person people take to mocking for helping themselves survive in that regard."

"So-these worse scenarios." Bojack winced as he watched you begin to walk down the side of the edge of the street, your head turning over your shoulder as the red edge of your eyes met on his. "Are they the type where it would be easier for you to not think about it ever again? Because I can't imagine it being any more creepy or weird than the blundering mole guy over there who's been staring down a you from the window these past few weeks."

"I allow men to turn my legs up and do whatever they want to me for a living. To survive." The pink tint of your lip raised up as you turned your head down, palms squeezed across your skin as you turned your head down by the crack of the street, the dirt grim of the soles of your feet now stepping onto the cracks of the street.

"Right. I understand that." His voice was somber, uncertain as he watched your body sway by the street, your hands pressed on the side of your arms as you head kept downward. He took a hitch of a breath as he breathed in, rolling his shoulders to try and rid of the timid feeling of the wave of nervousness waving through his body, his heart quickening, his teeth poked as his eyes watched you in his vulnerability."I was more just wondering where you're going to go after this, maybe, is what I was trying to suggest."

"I needed to go to see a woman who was going to fix my dress, anyway." Your head turned down as the red of your eyes crumpled across the dress. Bojack winced as his eyes followed your hand, your fingertips caressing across the edge of the fabric, and a light leading in the buried look of your eyes that came along with your emotion.

"How far is that?" His fingers gripped across the bag further, and he felt his heart quickening as his eyes turned across your eyes and felt his puffy eyes wince through his vision.

"Long enough." You laughed, your head turned down, shaky and exhausted as your eyes turned over to the clothes that were clamped against your hand, your body swaying in an energy that suggested that you were close to something being untethered. "It's not as if there's anything to do to fill up the space of time other than to survive. I should be grateful that I have a body to get me across and do that, at least."

"Well-what if you didn't have to go on your own?" Bojack's teeth poked, and another abrupt nervous breath came from his lip as his eyes turned over you inquisitively. Your head turnd over your shoulder, both of your feet now stood on the side of the crack of the street as your hed turned up to him, edged red eyes turning over to him through the grim of your face. "We don't need to make a big deal out of it or anything, obviously. Just-something to make it a little quicker, in case there's any chance that you might neeed that energy for later?"

His voice pipped up, a tentative sound of his voice uncertain and nervously suggesting and soppy as his he spoke the question that gave off his tentative core-there was an almost unfathomable tender adorability there. Something glinted in the fog of your eyes as your expression turned to meet his eyes, your body swaying while the hue of your red eyes met across his, only small minute turns of your eyes over Bojack that gave away thought. Bojack sighed as he turned his eyes down to the bag while he eased his hands against the bag, readjusting his body as much as he was able while he eased himself upward.

"Bad idea. Sorry. Just-wanted to try and make a day like this a little easier for all of us, is all. Especially if the guy girming his seedy eyes through the window and giving you those strains of the dirty grim in his eyes is something that you considerable tolerable."

"He doesn't aggravate me." Your head turned up as you began to walk your way across the street, stepping the bare soles of your feet across the street as you began to rush across it almost fragile.

Bojack's eyes dilated with sudden focus, and his ears lowered as he rushed behind you and followed; it was awkward to keep the bagd and the glass in his grip gracefully, but the quick rasped sound of his labor executed his effort as his stout legs tripped over each while he followed you.

"I learned a long time ago that people are inherently superficial and cheap because they allow the world to take away the rich experiences and individuality that their own self granted them that they then allowed to be taken from them, which ended up rendering them as superficial and as soulless as everyone else. People are born inwardly rich, usually, but everyone ends up uninsispred and soulless and superficial because they allow the world to take that from them." Your feet stepped onto the other side of the road, and Bojack rolled up his eyes in physical exhaustion a she gave a vague groan and continued to follow you over to the sidewalk. "I know men and people in general like the back of my own hand at this point; it's hard not to, when your entire existence is based off of trying to use people for your labor as much as you're capable of, to use them as weapons both for resources as well as a means for survival." You shrugegd, the action timid and shy and coming from a clear core of someone who had long since accepted that they were something who was pushed to the grim of the earth, and the gradual readjustment you had given to your standards for the sake of your sanity. "The man in that store dosen't bother me because he's a passive aggressor, but he doesn't inherently take anything away from e. Not really. Most men, people-anyone, especially when they realize they have nothing to lose by being a certain way with people in corners of the world where there's no punishment for it, end up more often than not trying to take away my own personal eyes, my humanity, the way I take things in, my eyes, the way I interpret people and situations, how I carry myself every day. That's the worst part-the things they say to me, how they talk to me, like they're gripping into a black hole of less than nothing and taking it for their own quick amusment to ee that doubt in my eyes. A man like that; he's just offered me a dry look or a heated disgust now and then. Nothing too terrible at all."

"Why do you put up with that at all if it's so disgusting and the men are so terrible, then?" His timid quick heart wasn't just coming from an odd ethereal form of attraction that he hadn't been expecting; it was coming from an odd sense of something that he only knew he had never quite experienced as much as he was now, ane motion that felt timeless and imposisbly rich and rare and the most detailed and worthwhile personal insight he had ever experienced; imposisby small, and currently not entirely recongizned as for what it was, but he felt a thread of something human, grounding, enuring and warm more than he had ever known had or would be possible. "There's no other options?"

"There's no other options." Your chin turned as it rested on your shoulder, and Bojack took an intake of a breath as he turned his eyes down, heavy worn eyelids meeting well across the depthful conflicted look in his eyes. "Who else would give me anything I need to be able to survive around here?"

A car flew by; Bojack get a timid breath as his eyes winded and he abruptly jumped back, fear dilated in his expression as he turned and watched the man pass by the street; his hard eyes turned over to you as he flashed past, sporting a colorful coat similar to the crowd Bojack had seen on the street when he had drove near the middle of the heat and center of the town.

"Did you see that parade earlier?" Bojack's voice pipped up, though the concern across his expression that executed his concerned grace showed off how much he was trying to wade through the dense complexity of his emotions as he continued to follow you down the street, breathing with a heavy hitch of a breah as he contuiend to follow you down the street. "I could take you down there. Could get your mind off of-well, things, for a little while, if that's something you felt like you wanted?"

His voice ewas uncharastically kind and shy in the tone of his suggestion. You only continued to walk forward, your hands eased against your arms as you continued to walk your way down the street. The rags that were gripped in your palms were starting to unravel from your hand, and Bojack's eyes widend as he began to pick up his speed despite his lack of breath; his eyes dimmed with concern as he watched you continue to walk forward, eyes distant, lips pressed together.

"I need to get this dress stitched back together. If I don't, I'll end up naked and broke-and I think any given person who's ever even so much as looked this place up would understand what that would lead to."

"Of course. I'm sorry, I didn't mean that you had to go there instead of doing this routine of trying to..well, live, I guess." His eyes darted over to one of the lanes that was passed through the buildings, ears lowered; though he was aware that part of it was him turning over too much in his headspace in his constant churning and never ending answers of his loathing and the analysis he was always doing in the back of his head of where he ended up emotionally and why, he couldn't help but feel a strange conscious udnerstnding that he wasn't worthy of spending the day with whatever it was that you were inspiring out of him. There was a flash of color that splashed itself across one of the Los Angeles buildings as it flew itself over the front of the sky, and Bojack's eyes snapped up as his ears lowered while he looked over the ripple of the flag, bright neon, and the vague white chatter from the street a few houses away.

"I'm getting older, anyway. And I'm unheard, and sometimes i feel myself doing a wide overscope view of my life of who I am, who I've been, and of what I've done to be able to respond to that person everyday; and it makes sense that I'm so small, powerless, that I'll be forgotten. My life wasn't much, just the usual patterns of responding to what is around me and tyring to cope as anyone would in the same circumstance. When I was a little girl, I used to think I deserved love, or that I was misunderstood; but there as never anything about me that ever stood out that would have given another person the motivation to even turn my way, not on the surface, anyway-and any deep quirks or unique thoughts or experiences, they were just meant to be expereiced just for me."

"I don't think that's true." Bojack's voice had a tone of a somber insistence. Your eyes turned up as the red look of the somber uncertainty turned over to him; now that Bojack was walking beside you, meeting into the soft pain of the edge of your eyes and the curiosity that you had at Bojack's insustance, he truly saw that motherly charm in your eyes that he had been aware of to begin ith since he had seen the softness even in the sway of your exhaustion as you had made your way around the building. He felt a pressure in his chest clench, and the emotion you inspired out of him was profoundly simple and straightforward, as most things that life was about was, and he felt his eexpresison become swept with a clumsy timid emotion as his eyes met yours. "If that were true, I don'tt hink some dumb superficial asshole would have stopped his car just to try and help you out with clearing your head and making it clear that this guy in there is not worth the time of day."

Your lips raised up into an emotion that almost could have been seen as gentle in a sad and humored wya, and something about i added a layer of emotional depth that wasn't annoying, full of pressure or something he would have rathered ignored like the way it was with most interactions that either ignored or aggravated how he carried himself and the damage that he brought with him; it was a soft, and exhausted humor, your eyes turning down as a soft emotion turned across your cheeks as your lips raised in a reflective thought.

"I thought you would have wanted something out of me. When you frist walked up to me. I could sense that there was something about you that seemed especially-wise, pure, in a sense, clumsy as you are."

"What?" Bojack's eyes winced as he chuckled, his expression turning into that awkward self consciousness, and your head turned as you looked over at him and have him a raise of your lip while it met ito the soft searching of your eyes.

"There are entire details in you. An entire gentle, soft, pure world. It feels like a constant purpose. It's a shame that it seems like everyone looks over just how beautiful and detail and graceful, human and unforgettable it is." Your hands squeezed across your arm as you turned your head back down to the crack of the dirty sidewalk. Bojack's eyes lowered down, emotion of thought eased acoss his features as he turned his eyes down, ears lowered.

"Well, you wouldn't be the first to suggest that. I've had a few female directions-one female director-that told me something similar." His eyes turned up as he followd you cross the parking look, reaching out his hand as he placed his hand on the door, stepping back as he opened up the door witht he bell ringing. "I don't think it's a coincidence that anyone who's ever said that have also only spent about less than a half hour with me. This interaction being a clear example."

Your head shook, in a way that was barley perceptible in the action, though there was plenty of layer of emotion behind it.

"There's something about you. An entire world. Black, melancholic, incessantly soft, familiar, gentle, hopeful." Your head turned open to the door that led into the convenience store, your head ducking down as you looked over into the cluttered stagnant area. "I can't imagine how long it would take to experience and know of it. But I've never felt more fulfilled or more human than as much as I have been talking to you for the past fifteen minutes."

"I think it may have been even shorter than that." Bojack breathed abruptly as he tripped over his feet while he kept the door open. His eyes turned over to where the mole man was standing behind the counter, the chubbiness of his arms and the strict look of his working shirt snapped around his body as he turned to behind the cashier. The concern on Bojack's face tensed further as he winced over to the man, ears lowered.

"However long it's been. I guess it doesn't matter." Your sickly eyes turned over tot he convenience store, head ducked forward, and though your attention was focused on the white light stagance of the inside store, all the energy and the attention was in your disposition and words that were dedicated to him. Your expression was sickly, childlike-pure. Bojack turned his eyes back to you, expression not full od judgement or even invalidation, but rather a bleak and questioning vulnerability.

"Is this something you've only seen in me, or is this a survival damage thing?"

"Bojack!" The mole man let out a weeze of his sudden jolted curve of a loud noise; obnxixous and demanding, and Bojack's attention flew to the mole man, your expression following as your body, leaned forward in curisotry straightened up at the sudden bellow of the man on the other side of the glass, the blunder of his body turning around as the small glare of his eyes snapped over through the window.

"Hey, man." Bojack's quick timid gasp as his ears flicked upward abruptly turned down into a complacency defense, and his palm came to ease on your hand as he felt your caution sudden taking the majority of your air. His fingertips caressed across your palm, and the sickly bony slender feeling of your hands didn't respond immediately; they were pal,e limp and unresponsive. "I just wanted to come in so that you can know that your 'mission' was accomplished." He waved his other hand in front of him as he gave the man a hard look, attempting to work with him and setting a boundary to making the scenario any more complicated than it was. "You don't have to worry about her stumbling around your space every again. And I wanted to-" His eyes turned down to you to make sure you were following with what he was insisting; your head turned over to look at him, and you gave a curt nod as you met the following of his uncertain eyes. "-Let her come over here so that she can let you know thay she will not be coming around here any more.'

Your head turned back to the mole man, and your body straightened up as you gave him a small nod. The mole man's heavy, wheezing breathing and the large blunder of his body stumbled forward as the small bead of his mole eyes turned between the two of you, teeth poked out and the small beediess of his eyes looking between the two of you through fogged glasses.

"I don't remember asking for her to specifically duck her hed inside and to announce leaving."

"Yeah?" Bojack's smirk raised upward into an aggressive raise of his lip while he felt a quick heat of annoyance come over him. "Why don't you make a goodman checklist next time so someone can do your petty bidding for your failing business perfectly?"

The mole man's eyes flashed over to you, his hand cramped on the front of his chest as he gazed at you tentatively.

"I don't want you coming back here, you understand? Not with your dirty skin and your grimy disposition and the way you bring those trashy men around here that only see you as an object-don't you dare come around here again. Are we clear?"

"I wasn't aware that the area was being possessed or obtained." You straightened your body up, and Bojack's eyes dimmed as he looked over at you as his body lacked against the door, and though he still felt that aggression towards the man, the soft way you spoke guided him to a concern of something that felt like more concern more than detachment than he had ever felt. "You could have told me to leave."

"You could have told her to leave." Bojack's voice was edged and pointed as his hands came to rest on your arms, palms rubbing against the side of your body as he pulled you back, offering a glare as he looked over to the mole man. "Would have saved you a lot of trouble with something that's as desperate and as important as keeping this shithole up right for the couple of months of its existence, wouldn't it?"

The mole's eys flashed behind his glasses as he snapped his eyes between the two of you, his expression tense, and he offered that jaded edge back to yourself, your own body stepping back and leaning against Bojck's embrace, and his palms awkwardly and clumsy squeezing across your skin even as he tried to execute his aggression.

"You should know your place. You're lucky you even have a place to put a tail between your legs around this area-or anywhere."

"Watch it." Bojack's ears lowered down as he offered the man a flair of his eyes. "Honestly, with the way this dump is going, it's more than likely that this place won't keep up for more than a month. I bet that the only reason why this place didn't burn to the ground immediately business wise was because she was around to make those trashy men even care about this place to begin with."

"And what are you doing with the likes of her? Gripping your hands around her arms, trying to keep her by you like some kind of possession? What do you think you're going to gain out of gripping your hands on her and taking her out into your empty day? Do you think that's going to save you from your own stupid life?"

"What would you know about it?" Bojack's voice began more edged, his snout pressing on your shoulder as he pulled you inward to his embrace. "At least I have something in my life to even come down from. Who are you to start flashing out judgements?"

The mole man's eyes snapped over to your body; you felt yourself stepping back and further against Bojack's embrace, even as you felt his own hands lost in the vague film of sweat that came along with his nervousness.

"I know that I don't want any business to be done with you, but you be careful of this sad sex sack. He's known for taking in woman for a coulple of months, entertaining himself with however they keep him from whatever hell he's carrying around in that headspace, and keeping it gripped under his shoulder for whatever they're worth."

The insult on Bojack's features was increasing, his ears flown back and the burning insult in his eyes. Your head turned as you looked over at him over your shoulder, expression detached and helpless. "Why is any of that your business?"

"I'll know more about this sad sakc of a woman more than you ever will."

"Don't you talk to her that way."

"I'm not fond of her polluting the reputation of my business-and I mean that, no matter what you might say about it not being something that's already helpless. But even with the way I see this woman, she dosne't deserve to go along with someone who has never accepted or matured past the idea that life is full of components of grabbing people's attention for a fleeting moment for whatever it is that you do and then having to cope with yourself." The mole man's eyes glinted as his expression snapped over to your body. "You deserve to know who's trying to use you for your next play thing."

"Hey, asshole. I'm trying to take her somewhere where she can breathe. Properly. Not where she has to spend her life stumbling around some creep and trying to keep her head down because she can probably sense your creepiness from miles away."

The mole man's eyes snapped up to Bojack, hand cramped by his chest as he gave him an intense flair of a challenge.

" Weren't you the man known for trying to hang yourself off of the edge of your balcony a little while ago, Bojack? What was it, something along the lines of throwing a role off of the balcony, hanging it over the edge of your neck, jumping and climbing over the edge of it for the sake of trying to-what? Escape the wretch that is yourself? This woman, any woman-she's not going to give you clarity any more than any other person ever could. She's not going to change you."

"Never asked, weird that you know that and are thinking about it-and not my problem what you think I"m doing."

Bojack jammed his hand on the door as he gave a abrupt breath. His eyes only took a break in their defense and insult when he turned his head over to you with his eyes lowered into a edge of concern-one that spoke that he more than likely alrwasyd had these narratives in the grim of his headspace, and far beyond.

"You can get in the car. If you want. Though if you weren't interested or safe after hearing all that, I wouldn't blame you."

"So it is true?" The mole man's voice pipped up, and Bojack's eyes squinted as he flared his eyes back over to him, one hand pressed on his hip. "You did try to publicly execute yourself over the balcony?"

"You don't need to spell it out."

"What make you do it this time? Some distraction fall through? You realizied the distraction wasn't wirth it to begin with? Or did a girlfriend break up with you and make you start jamming around the likes of sidewalk trash like this?"

"Ok, that's enough." Bojack's head turned to you, and this time his eyes were more weary but insistent more than they were of one of a question. His voice was low, cautious as he spoke to you with mor edge, his insistence being met by his hand as he turned his palm over to the middle part of your back. "Please, outside. If nothing else happens today or if I don't do anything for you, I can at least do this."

"You don't have to do that." Your slender body was eased against Bojack's palm, and his expression winced as he turned his eyes down with an edge of doubt at your words. His eyelids lowers, and his expression turned back while he met your insistence, though there was a detached pain in there that had that sleepy heaviness of poetic exhaustion that he knew all too well-though it was the first time it had felt like a companionship, rather than something that was only carried with him and detachment of other people being the only accompaniment to it. Your hand came to rest on his palm that eased against yours; Bojack's expression was clumsy, shy as his eyes widned while he felt your hand press on his palm as you gave him a nod. There was something incredible loveable about him; your fondness for him painted images in your head just by taking in his plump, lovable, uncertain and shy comcplaied and charismatic disposition. You saw a flash of his plush and stout body, lovable and memorable human and enduring with its deserving nature of the most concentrated love as he stood in the kitchen, his hand on the diamond snout of his forehead as his stout fingertips eased through his black mane, the sway of his body and the edge of a rasp from his clumsy tone that had nothing but soft meaning; flawed and clumsy and uncerintly executed, but full of the most endearing and want of a pure heart wadinign through that tasted to yo like fatherhood and the missed opportunity of it. And yet, there was a fear and doubt that was crossing over the majority of your disoriented and uncertain senses,

"Maybe he's right. I can take care of myself."

"No." Bojack's eyes widened, flicker of panic in his eyes as he watched you with a hollowed panic. "But he-"

"It's alright." You gave Bojakc a quick nod, and he felt too apologetic, too uncertain and profoundly guilty just from the virtue of being beside you or of even the suggestion of what he pursued as his desperate eyes glimmered across yours. He stepped back as your hand raveled across his palm that attempted to rest on the middle of your back, his expression detached as he watched you duck under his s arm while you pressed your hand on the front of the glass door, the bell rining from the sudden force of your hand slamming on the glass, your palm rested on the edge of the door as you turned your head over to Bojack; his eyes met yours with an apologetic wince as he saw you step out. "Thank you, anyway, for everything."

"No-wait. What about your dress?" His hend reached out, his teeth poked, and the humble human clumsy gentleness and the purity you had spoken about; something he couldn't quite gather or take seriously, but there had been such belief in the way you had spoken it that even for a moment had it taken him away from his usual chaos that came along with a meaninglessness and constant ongoing exhausted life.

"I'll take care of it." Your expression was one of an exhausted romantic apology; and even there, as you stepped out in a rushed fashion and turned your head over your shoulder to meet Bojack's desperte eyes did you give him a quick raise of your lip, and that same profound warmth that met your eyes was still present even as you stepped out. The noise of the bell as it clanged against the door added an increased aggrevsation to the scene and Bojack's eyes hollowed as he stepped over his feet and tried to follow you out; but with one simple gesture, your hand waved in front of you in insistence did Bojack fell himself abruptly having to stop in an odd sense of shame from his end, inhreint in how it followd him, and from a detachment from yours as you shut the door behind you with a clang.

"That seemed to be a statement well enough." Bojack's gentle pathetic panic snapped into an edge wince as he turned his head over to the mole man; he was taking to wiping the cloth by the sides of the counter around him to his palm.

"What is your problem? That woman needs somewhere to go."

"And she has somewhere to go. You. What a catch." The mole man nodded a she met Bojack's wince and the offense of his expression. "But think about it-was the place where she's going somewhere worthwhile if all it takes is one recent ans accurate story to tell about how she's going to a suicidal madman's house?"

Bojack's head snapped over his shoulder as he gave an abrupt awkward breath while he snapped his bulged eyes over to where you had made your way out. You were already taking to making your way across the street, your arms gripped against your rags while your misstep took you across the road, head turned down as you made your way to the sidewalk.

"She has nowhere else to go."

"And you have nothing else to do, is that it?" The mole man's eyes raised quizzly upward as his hands pressed on the counter. He winced as he placed on hand on his head, ears flown back as he turned to the mole man, eyes winced and puffed while the soles of his feet stepped from foot to foot.

"I don't know why you care so much. It's not like you were worried about her wellbeing or anything that had to do with her before."

"I don't want her around the area, no. But that stunt you pulled a little while ago, with your body being thrown across the side of the balcony and with that neck around your rope-"

"Why are you even reading stuff like that?"

"I didn't want to." He tapped his sickly yellow hand to the newspaper beside him, his stout finger pressing against the front of the paper as he jamemed a finger onto the paper that crumpled under his indication. Bojack's eyes gave a vague bulge as he looked in front of him and stepped forward towhere the mole indicated, though his insecure eyes turned over to the window now and then as his teeth poked while he walked his way forward, eyes wincing as he turned his eyes over to the newspaper. His eyes widend with a vague jolt as he looked over the paper that the mole man had crumpled under his fingertip; the photo being of one who's color was worn from the past few months that had occurred, blurred and distant with the snapshot Bojack had been vaguely aware of before he had managed to clumsily wrap his body around the balcony rail and turn his body over on the other side; the rope he had impulsively thrown over th other side of the gray rail after a few especially long and stagnant weeks where there had been enough emptiness and just enough detachment of reality that he had taken to throwing the rope over the side of the rail; it had been a night where he had drinken just enough to think clearly enough as to what he wanted to do and how he wanted to execute it, but not nearly clear headed enough to calculate how terrifying it would have been to pull his stout body over the balcony, or the amount of dizzying height that would meet the blurriness of his eyes while he turned his body over the cold rail of the balcony; the sickness that would overpower his senses as he turned his body over the cold feeling of the metal.

He had been just aware enough that he had been temporarily snapped out of his senses of attempting to force himself into the flow of forcing himself over the rail despite the sudden clench in his stomach, or the turn over of his senses where he had kept his emotions numb enough to allow his body to take the majority of how he was propelling himself forward; the flash and the various obnoxious comments that hd come from people who still had a vague shrill of sense in their response to life that Bojack despised had both annoyed him and brought him back to reality; with a snap of his head had he turned over to where there were several people grounding on the street, hand on their cameras as their eyes had looked between one another as the camera had been raised up to him. The annoyance and the fear overcame the desire he had to throw his body off the balcony, and he had settled for throwing his legs off of the balcony and back onto the settlement of the ground while he had stumbled back and away from the metal edge, gripping his hands on the rope as he ha pulled it over the metal rod, stepping back, the only sign of the attempt by the time he had taken his foggy ridden headspace back to bed with a few more drinks being the lazily thrown and leftover rope sat on the deck-and the photos of the blurry incident made by impsulive moments from the passing by glinted eyes of the people and their judgement over him.

"And you're keeping this around like a bored creep?" Bojack's true exhaustion executed fully as he snapped his eyes forward in a flare and stumbled over his feet while he snapped a hand out to grip on the magazine, but the mole took his hand and gripped the magazine away from him. Bojack's eyes winced as he stood upright and swayed while he looked at him with a puffy flare of his eyes.

"Yes, I made a bad choice." He waved his hands beside him, clumsily and with his eyes protruding desperately; the mole man gave a minute shake of his head as he kept the magazine gripped by his palm and pressed it by him, executing Bojack's desperation further as the glare in his eyes turned to ea bulge. "But I don't see why it should matter if I take her to my place or not. And I wasn't even planning on taking her to my house, anyway. I just wanted to try and make her sad, shitty and depressing afternoon a little different. Why not, right? At least it makes one less crazy person around here less likely to snap." He lazily snapped his hand over to the mole man as his eyelids lowered. "Believe me, the place they come to first is always the low guy. So-you're welcome."

"Maybe you're right. Either way, she's getting away. So at least my job is done for me. If you two crackheads want to trip over yourselves with your flawed crazy lives, that's up to either of you. I'm not sure she would know depth if she saw it anyway; woman like that, that low, they get to a point where they're not even human."

"She's gone?"

Bojack's voice pipped up as his tone gave an edge, and he snapped his head over his shoulder while he stumbled over his feet to try and find where you were. The mole man snapped his eyes up to where your legs were stumbling across the street, awkward and and with your feet tripping across the cracks of the road while you rushed forward with your head turned down. Bojack's eyes kept winced and desperate while he turned his head over to the door, and with an abrupt breath did he make his way to the door while he kept his hand on his ears for the sake of executing even the slightest emotional grounding.

"I think the woman's been through enough, if they way she looks and carries herself is any indication of her life. Knows how to carry her own. Takes a certain amount of endurance and wisdom for someone to live a life like that. No one guarantees anyone anything, and some people are meant for nothing. There's a certain beauty to that heaviness, but I can't imagine what it feels like to carry it."

"And you think anything is better than her ending up with a douchebag that was showing that he didn't care if he lived or not an afternoon that already happened just a few weeks ago?"

"I know your patterns. And I'm sorry. But I guess there's a respect even for the downtrodden."

"Yeah. Unless they're trying to use a crummy space that they don't even own as a property to take away even that relief."

Bojack's hand came to jam on the door, his breath coming out in shaky waves as he jammed his way through the open door, eyes winced in that timid pain as he rushed his way over to the edge of the street. He was panting heavily, both from emotion and from the strain of his desperation, but his focus turned up to where you were already taking to walking your way down the sidewalk, and with his stout plush body curved forward did he give out an abrupt call;

"Hey!"

You didn't respond at first; your body was kept the street, head turned down as your palms gripped on your arms. There was a heaviness of physiological complexion that Bojack recognized all too well that came along with the inherent way that life carried someone. Bojack rolled his shoulders as he turned his eyes up as straightened his back up with a vauge grunt, eyes turning as he looked over to the car that was driving its way past, and then tripped over his feet as he began to follow your body swaying through the street.

"Hey-c'mon, please." Bojack breathed with a shaky insistence again, and this time his voice could afford to be more somber as he managed to catch his breath, eyes wincing as he tried to catch his breath while he made his way behind you. You stopped in your steps, and it was clear that you heard, and somehow this caused Bojack to feel more abrupt and cautious as he straightened himself upward while he pressed his hand on the back of his neck.

"You can come in the car. I can drive you to your dress appointment, I can take you somewhere where you can camp out at a place that's even better off than this asshole; I don't care. But let me take you somewhere." His eyes winced as he felt his fingertips ease through his mane, one of which was becoming increasingly more disarrayed, and his stout body raised up as he watched you with his teeth poked while he tried to catch his breath. Your head turned over your shoulder as you turned to watch him, Bojack's eyes lowered into a dim insistence, humble and questioning as his eyes turned over to you in desperate thought, looking every bit humble as much as he had a purity of humanity in him. "Please. Don't worry about what that guy said in there. It was-" He paused as he gave an abrupt breath, eyes wincing as he flicked his eyes to the side for a moment. "-It was nothing. Nothing to do with you. Nothing that you have to put up with, I promise. Not for the time I drive you."

You stepped over, your eyes turned up as your expression met across his eyes, vulnerable and full of a profound life that rested in them despite the clear apology and bewilderment and boyish humanity that he carried with him that he almost could have thought from the curiosity of warmth in your eyes was something that was almost a soft admiration.

"Ok." You gave a curt nod; your tone was soft, uncertain, with a tentative suggestion to it; but there was something in the way you spoke it that was both tragic and hopeful on the verge of whatever it was that your entire disposition seemed to execute.

"Yeah?" Bojack's ears flicked up as his eyes brightened for a moment, eyes turning across yours as his body straightened up. "You're sure?" He gestured to you tenticaley, eyes turning up against you as his ears splayed back. "I don't want to feel like I'm forcing you."

"If you want to, of course I will." Your hands were still kept on by your arms, but you gave him a curt nod as you met his eyes. He felt his lip raise up into a shadow of a smile, though it was tentative as much a sit was with that boyish dash of hopeful glint across his snout, his fingertips playing.

"You said this woman was only a few miles away?"

"Probably more than likely at least an hour or two by foot. By driving-well." You gave a shrug of your shoulders, your head turned down as you walked your way to him. "I've never driven before." Your eyes flicked up, tentative and vaguely amused as your eyes met on Bojack's, though it was under a layer of your own defense of emotion.

"Well, you're not missing out on much." Bojack's eyes turned down, eyelid heavy and eyes empty as he gave a shrug of his shoulders, distant in his exasperation of the statement. "Around here, it's probably better that you don't. Makes it less likely for you to have to put up with assholes and screaming idiots and whatever else that might come up."

"In my experience, the more things that are cut off, the more opportunity for existing is lost." You began to walk past Bojack, and his tentative air didn't leave him as his troubled eyes followed you; his hand rested for scratching the back of his mane as he watched you with worried eyes, but after a few feet of you walking forward did he roll his shoulders and give a breath, following you as your own delicate form began to walk down the street.

"Well, yes, that might be true to some extent. But I was more so just trying to make you realize that being able to get around here normally is not what you would think it is."

"I walk around everywhere. I barely get anyway, not really. It takes me days to weeks just to plan to get somewhere, and that's assuming that I can get something appetizing at any moment." Your head turned over your shoulder as you have him a curt raise of your lip, meeting in your eyes as much as the emotion of your face was able. "I appreciate the sentiment."

Bojack chuckled, in that heafy and nervous way that caused his torso to tremble as he continued to follow you down the sidewalk, his hands keeping awkwardly by his chest as he followed you down the cracked street. You pasued over to the intersection across from the convenience store. Already had the mole inside of the store taken to putting the cheap plastic curtains halfway down over the window; though they were open just enough so the mole could be able to look out from under the curtains if he wanted.

Bojack sighed as he came fro behind you, and as his eyes roamed over your body and the specific body type you were; the curves of your hips an the way your body was shown to be in decent shape with how ti poked out from the rags that surrounded your body did he feel a vague increased senese of bewilderment while he felt an inward question as to why he was doing this; there was a quickened pace of his heart as he winced while his hands played as he turned his head to the side tentatively.

"Are you sure you can take me to the dress tailor?" Your head turned over as you looked over at Bojack; he wincd as his eyes turned back over to the question of your eyes, unable to stop the pressing of his palms by his mane. "It might be a little while when I'm there. Not that you have to stay."

"I wouldn't mind staying." Bojack tried to sound confident, and his eyes searched yours as you gave a raise of your lip and turned your eyes down and gave a nod. He gave another awkward chuckle, mainly to dispoiate the tension he felt from his own uncertainty as his eyes turned up to met you as you turned to meet his eyes. "I mean, there's no point in trying to drive all the way over there if it's just to haul ass, right? May as well stay for a little while, see what else you need? I got no plans."

The emotion in your eyes was shy, but there was a slight relief through your expression as you met fully on Bojack's expression.

"I don't see any reason why I should say no."

Bojack gave a curt nod as he met your expression, the gentleness in his eyes meeting through the odd reassurance he met through meeting your eyes.

"Great. It's an afternoon, then."

His eyes flicked down tentialey for a moment, and there was an awkwardness to the way he rubbed the back of his neck, expressing wincing as he stepped his way back and turned his eyes up to meet yours. Your eyes turned down, stepping back onto the sidewalk as you turned and began to walk your way across the street, and Bojack's face feel from the tentative and nervous grin he had given you a moment before. His fingertips played as he gave a pout while he began to follow you across the street, ears flicked down as he followed you across the street. Your head ducked down subsciously as you turned your head over to the curtains of where they were no mostly closed, and Bojack rushed forward awkwardly with a grunt as he began to follow you down the street, his eyes turning on your worriedly as he followed you down the sidewalk.

"Don't worry about that guy. Don't make him make you feel small. In a couple of weeks I bet you'll never see or hear anything from people like him again and he'll be long gone."

Your head shook, and a vague laugh eased across your lips as you turned your head down, your palms gripping on your arms.

"I'm not worried about the area. These men, the ones who have been using me and have been making it so that I could live, have been spreading rumors about me anyway. They wouldn't use me up for much longer."

"Use you up?" Bojack's eyes turned over to your body as he raised a brow, and there was an edge of sadness to his voice, though it mostly came along as clumsy curiosity. His eyes turned over your body as he looked you over, and for a moment was there noting but silence, and his eyes turned down, heavy and empty as he raised out a palm to hover over the middle part of your back, wanting to offer you as much support as much as he was able, though he didn't quite feel that there was a sense of worthiness to it-but the desire was palpable, demanding, desperate, unusual, and soft at the same time. "You know that you don't have to live like that. You deserve better than that. At least a little bit."

You gave a small shrug of your shoulders, turning your eyes down as you gave a reset of a breath.

"Well. It is how it is, as it goes. There's nothing to be done about it, nor should there be. Not really. Not for me."

Bojack's eyes were detached and empty as he looked over to the cracked ground, and he closed his eyes as he felt the muscles on his face tense. He opened them as he gave a heavy reset of his breath, indicating his head over to the red topless car while he turned his head over to it.

"In any case, I'll take you somewhere better." He had one brow raised in that dry and charismatic fashion as his eyes turned to you. "That way you can at least think about what you should and shouldn't put up with at the next-place that you end up needing to camp out in." He grunted as he saw the way you stepped over to the car; he reached his arm out as he pressed his fingertips on the handle, turning it ou as he did so as your dirty body swayed in front of the driver's seat. "You can..get in the passengers seat. Or the back." He winced as he looked you over. "I'm sorry, I'm assuming you can't drive?"

"You would be right. I've never been able to do much of anything." Your walked past him and around the car, and Bojack's hollowed empty eyes followed. He took a breath as his eyes turned down while he eased himself into the car, turning his fingers on the side of the door as he closed it. His dry eyes followed you as he watched you walk around the car and over to the passengers' seat, your hands gripped on the door handle, easing yourself into the passenger's seat, Bojack's dry eyes following you as you eased yourself in and closed the door. He settled his arm on the side of the door, stout body leaned back as his stomach pileld out while he started up the car, and he turned his head over his shoulder while he turned it back behind the parking lot, and with one hand lazily gripped on the side of the wheel did he begin to turn it out onto the road. His eyes flicked over to you now and then, and his shoulders rolled and readjusted as he tried to straightened himself up and kept his eyes on the road, turning his eyes ocer to the gradually polluted road that was surrounding the streets. His eyes turned over the crowd that was passing in front of his eyes as he contuiend to drive his way past the buildings while the small convenience store began to gradually fade away behind his rear view mirrors. His fingertips took to tapping on the wheel now and then as his eyes turned over to you, ears lowered and eyes winced as he looked over at you, emotion tenadtive and uncertain as you body kept slumped on the side of the chair, your arms pressed on the dirt of your skin, your body lowered down on the leather.

"You know I, uh-have several different types of ways that you could clean yourself off, when you get the dress on." His rasped voice was cracked and uncertain as he spoke, his fingertips pressed on the wheel as he tapped it. His eyes turned over to you now and then between his words, and your eyes kept turned down as your sunk against the chair, though the shyness of the opening warmth behind the emiton in your expression as it met on his for a moment wa enough for him to keep going. "I mean, it's back at my house, obviously. But you could get a cloth, get in the sink." His eyes lowered as his ears turned down. "Maybe you could even get a shower, if you..wanted. I have a tub, a pool." He chuckled as he turned his eyes over to you with his eyes wincing in that awkward humor and apology again. "You don't want to go all this way to the tailor dress place and and put yourself and that woman through all of this without getting yourself freshed up first, right? Especially with that color."

Your eyes turned down to the cloth that was in your hands, your fingertips gripped against the dirty grittiness of the cloth.

"I used to be a quality woman. Or, at least, the ability to be able to be somewhat of a quality one." Your eyes dimmed as your expression turned over the shards of the cut cloth in front of you, and your head turned over to the window. "I've been in the dirt and grim and black for a long time, and in a way it feels like its where I belong. It's the only thing left that makes sense, really. Anything else feels-gross, in a way. Not fitted to me. Anything with hope or life or zest-it dosen't feel like me anymore. I don't know if I ever belonged there, in anything good or bright in life. I don't think I ever will, or if I ever want to anymore. I've come to succumb to the empty black, and the feelings of that lostness of that profound emptiness; I think wretched headspaces and the turning over of my energy is where I belong. And I don't think there's anything to fighting that anymore."

"No?' Bojack's eyes winced as his expression turned over your body. His pupils turned down as his ears lowered, a shadow on his face as he turned his eyes down. "I didn't mean you had to stay there. You don't have to stay, or even talk to me, and if it feels like a certain way, you don't have to stay there or enjoy any luxury or anything else." He waved his hand in a circle as his eyes turned up to the sky, mainly to narrate the casualty he wanted to execute, and the need to keep himself detached from your eyes that seemed captive in their complexity. "You don't need to worry about anything. The entire point is just for you to enjoy whatever it is that you need." He shrugged as he kept his eyes turned to the crowd that was now making its way across the street, pausing as he pressed his foot on the gas pedal while he watched the turn of the bright and colorful people crossing against the street in front of the spotlight. "It doesn't have to be a big deal. Matter of fact I think we're both in agreement that it isn't."

"You don't mind?" One of your hands was trialing against your hair as you turned your head over your shoulder and to Bojack; his eyes flittered across to your eyes as he gave you a nervous grin, wincing as he did so, but he kept the helpful nervous grin on his features as he shrugged and looked at you tentatively, attempting got keep the air as casual as he could.

"If it makes you uncomfortable, I could-invite someone over. It might make it feel a little less lille charity, and a little more…less like charity work, and more like somehting that you're doing just as another stop on one of you-" He shrugged as he turned his eyes up to the sky. "Wanderings."

There was a moment of pause from your end, and Bojack's eyes flicked over as he looked over at you, but only for a moment, feeling the idea that you needed your space. He heard you adjusting in the chair, and he kept his eyes on the open road as the rest of the people began to disperse from the open celebration. His teeth winced as he placed his foot on the gas pedal and drove his way further forward through the buildings, his eyes flickering over to the GPS every now and then; the store was only a few feet away, and he rolled his shoulders as he took a breath to try and dissipate the tension through his body.

"I would like that." You said it with a genuine warmth of hesitancy, but there was a genuine emotive respect and decision to your tone. Your head turned over your shoulder as you looked over to Bojack, and he flet his features soften, turning his eyes over to you as the gentleness met on your eyes. He gave you a small curt nod, the softness of his feuatres meeting across your eyes as he titled his head to you.

"Ok."

Silence passed between the two of you as he drove his way through the itnersection, and he patted his tongue across the top of his mouth while he contuiend to drive down the buildings.

"His name is Todd. The guy I mentioned about being around so you feel a little less shitty about-well, I don't know. Something good happening to you, I guess."

"I'll take whatever you're willing to give me. It's not a matter of what I feel like I do and don't deserve, not really. It's more about the idea that there's this-constant wrestling in my headspace, no matter what happens to me or how it happens, that makes me constnalty question everything and how I should feel about ti."

"Well, that's dumb. Isn't your life hard enough as it is?" His eyes turned to you with a vague pout on his expression as he turned and looked at you worrdily; but your eyes were kept away from his, your shoudlders limped on the edge of the seat. "If I were you I would just takae whatever goddamn puzzle pice was given to you. Espcially around her. Honestly, and I don't mean this as a warning, but-I can't imagine how a woman like you dosne't pray and fall to victimhood in some way in terms of-you know, your body."

Your head turned over to Bojack, and he felt a jolt go through him at his words and what they could have been interpreted by. His eyes winced as his body turned down against the chair, and he turned his head aross the wheel as he drove over to the entryway of where the GPS was leading.

"I obviously didn't mean that I'm thinking of you like that. I'm not taking you back home because I"m trying to use you as some weird object." He leaned forward as his hand gripped onto the key, then played with the medal in his hands for a moment as he felt the material ease agaisnt his fingertip while his eyes leaned down to the object. He didn't turn to meet your eyes this time, his shoulders turned down as he kept his eyes by the key. "I'm sorry. I'm just saying that it feels like a woman in your position would be-more susceptible to whatever weird terrible mysteries that the streets have going on, is all. I would imagine."

"It would be imagaining. If things were that bad, I wound't have mad eit this far."

"They don't-give you a hard time, at all?" He winced as his pout looked over to you, pathetic and helpless and curious.

"Only if I make it clear that they have something they want. With enough dirt and grim, even a younger woman is nothing more than waste."

Bojack's shoulders eased down, eyes turned down as ears turned back, soft and insecure.

"Oh."

Your hand gripped on the side of the car, and with your shoulder did you shove your force agaisnt the car door. Bojack took a deep intake of a quick breath, ears lwoered as his eyes turned up to where you got yourself out. His expression turned to the door as he shived his arm against it and slammed the door as he stumbled his way out, watching you with eyes lowered as he followed you to the entrance of the dress shop, small and fragile, antique and delicate.

"I would like to be able to live with your friend. Or-clean up, like what you described."

You paused at the front of the entrance to the antique shop; it was a door that was fairly modern, with a cask of wood against the front of the entrance that gave off the aesthetic that it wanted to give off a certain mood to the decoration. Inside, seen through the two square windows that were beside the entrance of the door, were pink delicate curtains that were strung against the front of the windows. Bojack's eyes snapped tentatively over to the windows as his ears lowered back, hands gripped on his chest as he turned to look at you uncerintily. Your eyes turned as you looked up at Bojack, eyes questioning and red edged as your eyes turned up to his. "If you'd like."

"Of course." His tone was uncertain, but he cleared his throat as he rolled his shoulders while his eyes met on yours. "That was why I suggested it."

"What is he like?" Your head turned over to the door as you reached out a hand to press on the handle; it was golden and carved in its set placement against the entrance.

"Todd? Jesus. I don't know how to describe him, exactly. He's-well, more of like the kid type than he is someone you could expect fo r someone that seems around your…age bracket." His eyes turned to you as his fingertips played on his wrists, eyes looking over you with his ears lowered. "He's kind. Playful. He seems like someone that would be decent for crashing, if that's something you were interested in." His eyes lowered as he turned his eyes down and gave a shrug, nervous fingertips scratching frantically on the side of his neck to try and keep the frantic chaos in his headspace away from himself as much as he was able that came along with every possibility. "He's a bit of a wild case, but he fills up the empty energy of the house well enough." He winced as a realization came to him, turning his eyes to you as eyelids raised up, ears lowered. "I'm sorry, I'm assuming you're in your thirties?"

"Twenty eight." You raised your eyebrows, skin deepening as it showed off how deep the wrinkles on your skin turned down on your face as you raised up your brows. "Though I'm sure the stress has made it obvious that I may as well be much, much older. Not to mention how likely it is that I'll die sooner rather than later."

"Eh." His eyes turned over you, eyes flicked over your body as his ears splayed while he looked you over. "You're doing alright. If a sex adeled addict asshole can see it, then I'd say you're doing ok."

Your eyes turned up to his, cheeks burning against the bleak pale of the hue of your skin as your eyes turned up and met his in the bittersweet edge of your red eyes.

"It dosen't matter much in the grand scheme of things anyway, does it?"

Bojack's teeth poked, and his eyes protruded as he watched over your body.

"Well." His fingertips played on his wrists as his eyes turned down, glimmered and uncertain. "I guess that is one way of-"

"Oh, she's here! Thank goodness!"

There was a shrill wave of a voice that came from over the other side of the door, and Bojack's attention, balanced, uncertain and focused into a gentleness snapped his eyes over to where he heard the thrill of the sudden trail of the voice on the other side of the door. His eyes widened as his ears flicked back while he stepped back on the steps, turning his head up to the door where he heard the sounds of the light footsteps of the sudden energy speeding through the other side of the door. His hands were placed in front of him as he stepped back, and your followed him as you rushed your way over to where he stepped back; there was a strange caution of shy apology in his eyes.

"Sweetie! I haven't heard from you in decades! I was hoping to see you soon-I haven't had any amount of delicate little women like you in ages, love!"

The voice trailed out, high pitched and elated as he tapping of her feet began to rush forward and through the door that sat between the two cluttered and delicately made curtains. There was the sound of several pieces of clothes being pushed to the side of an arm that slashed itself to the side of where there were the stumbling erratic excitement came from the slender form of the woman, large in air. Bojack winced as he stepped his way back, his eyes turning over to you in question; your hand only came out to grip on his palm on instinct in an odd want to be able to comfort him, and his eyes winced as his expression flashed down while he felt the shakiness of your hand grasping across his palm. Your palm was dirty and wretched, with the bones sticking out from the pale paper of your skin, and Bojack gave a timid breath as his eyes turned down while he felt your palm press on his wrist, ears flicked back as he he looked at the blue viens popping from your skin as your hand gripped on his skin. Your skin was covered in black soot and stains, and Bojack winced as he turned his eyes over your skin while your palms gripped on his wrist, and it was both delicate and comforting, a sense of disturbance flashing through Bojack as he felt himself jump under your touch.

The door was pounded against, and with several sounds of a click and a lock with the swan moving her body across the other side of the door did she work on opening it up, turning it open as it opened its way over to a fairly cluttered inward entrance, several dresses and clothes and fabrics in the dark room behind it dressed in melancholic atmospheres of the tailored fabrics around them.

A white neck slashed itself out of the open door; a stout swan woman, with the bottom half of her body dressed in several strewn ripped threads of fabric was torn around the tubbiness of her body, though her form still showed off parts of herself that was meant to be a more curved body. The long length of her neck craned out of the door as her eyes turned as narrowed down as she looked between the two of you, and her eyes had a glint of heat in her expression as she caught sight of Bojack for a moment; there was a glint of both apology and defnese as he jumped slightly at seeing her narrow eyes that clearly recongizned who he was. Her eyes widend in a sweetness as her focus turned back over to you, and instantly did emotion of welcome turn over her expression as she stepped her way out to you, swinging the door open as she raised her white arms outward, her eyes widned and glimmering while he walked her way over to where you stood. Your hand slipped out of pressing with reassurance against Bojack's hand as you gave her a raise of your lip, turning your eyes as you looked at her with a vague soft relief as she stepped her way out.

"It's so good to see you again! I was starting to think you left the area, or found someone else to do your clothes and your bidding." Her eyes fluttered as her pupils flicked in though as she raised out her arm to press on you shoulder. "Or-"

"Or was killed, or starved to death, or was abducted or taken advantaged of." You allowed your body to be gently lead forward to the woman as her arm came to rest on the middle part of your back. Her pupils widened as her expression turned down for a quick thought.

"It's ok. I know." Your hand came to rest of the curve of her white breasts, and she turned her eyes up to your reassurance; ort he attempt of it. "We both know how it is out here."

Her lip raised up, and she gave you a soft look, forgiving, as her expression met yours with gentle reassurance.

"C'mon. I know you better than that, after all."

Her arm reached out and leaned across your shoulder as she indicated her neck over to the open door, several clothes and free opne fabrics inside as she began to lead you to the open door. Your hand reached out as you allowed yourself to be pulled into her. Bojack stepped back as he watched you with his tentative apologetic eyes, fingertips coming to play on his wrist.

"Coming, Horseman?"

The swan woman's voice trailed out over her shoulder, and Bojack's eyes widened as he winced as his fingers ceased to play on his wrists for a moment. He took a breath as he rolled his shoulders and began to make his way inside, following the swan woman and the delicacy of how she led you inside, her arm graced softly against your shoulders as she led you inward.

"I'll admit I'm surprised when I realized the company that you've found." The swan woman slendery took her arm off of your shoulders, eyelids lowered into a welcoming but cocky emotion as she stpeped her way back and over to the clothes and the mannequins beside her while she stepped her way back into what was a wooden and anqtuie feeling looking atmosphere, several dressed thrown across the area; some of the delciatley placed on the white staures, some of the placed against several white sofas and couches surrounding the area with the white see through fluttered rags turned over them in the sign of someone who had a busy mind, a little but of effort of organization, and the clutter that came along with the constant string of ideas with only so much time and energy to organize them. On the other side of the room was several different mirrors, tall and rectangular, all of them placed beside one another as they sat on the other end of the floor cluttered with the fabric, all of them soft pastel colors, and with a luxury that was Bojack wouldn't have expected for someone to take in a dirty woman.

"We weren't planning on it." Bojack's tone was dry as he began to collect the general mood of the atmosphere, eyelids lowered as he kept his fingers pressed on his wrist while he looked around the cluttered but colorful, ultimately determinedly artist, area around him."Like most things, kind of just happened."

"Either way, it's good to see you again." The swan woman thrilled a laugh as she bowled her body downward and over to the rags and the fabric that was under her, letting out soft mumbled thrills of her amusement as he turned her body down and began to pick up several of the fabric that were squares detached from anything around her. "Never let anyone tell you that you're just another homeless woman, darling. Even just from the time I've known you, I know that you have so much sweetness, imagination, independence inside of you." She contuiend to hum as she ducked over to the several see through fabrics beside her. Bojack's eyes continuously kept flickering over to your body, your body sat down on the side of one of the couches where you were taking to placing your body beside the see through fabrics around you. His eyes lowered in worry, and you didn't turn your head to look back to meet his eyes for the moment; your sickly expression was kept on the woman as she kept her plump waist leaned down while she continued to snap through the fabrics.

"I'll call Todd." He said it with a vague feeling of tentative uncertainty, teeth winced as he turned his eyes and looked over to you. The statement was enough to get your attention, and your turned your edged eyes up to his while you met his oddly shy and apologetic eyes. "He lives with my, uh-agent." His eyes lowered as he gave a shrug. "Or maybe he's just going around and breezily going from place to place, I don't know."

Your lip raised up. "Go ahead."

"Oh, you don't need to go in the back. Please don't." The swan woman straighted her boy up as she looked over at Bojack with a thrill of her eyes, just as Bojack was about to step over and behind one of the curtains.

"It's really ok." He pointed over his shoulder and to one of the blue curtains that rested behind the mirror. "Honestly, it's probably for the best that you don't hear whatever weird context comes out of it."

Your lip raised up, meeting into the softness of your eyes , and there was a bittersweetness there of knowing humor and a distant sadness mixed in with the calm that came with experience.

"I'm sure I've heard much crazier. You're talking to the woman who bangs dirty men every night, all night-who has long since lost any coherent trait about her to not make her just another lost number who has long since lost her defitinative sense of humanity or individuality."

"Don't give me that." The stout swan woman spoke before Bojack could manage to come up with a response, her body straighted as she leaned her body upward; this time she had two fabrics; one was a delicate pink, the other a see through blue, and she looked over at you teasingly as she began to step over the rest of the clump of the fabrics that were clumed around the floor as she began to walk her way over to where the delicacy of you body was slumped forward. "Anyone who was less sharp or street smart as you has earned being able to navigate and do whatever she wants, in whatever way she wants, and to feel profound about it." Her narrow eyes snapped teaisngly over to Bojack as she began to walk over beside you, keeling down in front of your body where the rest of the clump of the dress surrounded her. "I'm sure that your company that you found today wouldn't have been able to drag it out for this long."

Bojack winced as he gave the swan woman a flair of his eyes.

"Why are you dragging me into this?"

"Sorry." The swan woman's narrow eyes flashed over to Bojack humorously. "I just mean to say that it's unlkley for someone to navaigte a life this rough for this long."

You said nothing; instead, your response was more passive, your head turned down as the swan woman began to play with the fabrics in front of you. Bojack still felt that grim of a strike of defense pass through him, and his pout stayed on his snout as his eyes flared over through the scene of the swan woman as she began to talk to you lowly, the kindness in her voice still being heard the most through the context of the way she talked to you lowly. Bojack's eyes glared down, until he turned his eyes back up to the swan pointedly.

"Why did you never take her in if it was so obvious how much help she needed?"

The swan woman paused in the soft way she was talking to you. Her face froze as her eyes turned over to Bojack, and she didn't try to phase out the challenge of her expression as she turned her eyes back over to your wrists, ones of which were examining both of the threads.

"Why didn't you?"

Bojack brislted. "Because I-"

"We just met." Your voice interjected, and Boack felt the wave of his heat of defense beiginning to lessen as his eyes lowered while he turned and looked at you with a complicated flair of his eyes. Your head turned as you looked over at the swan, who gave you a nod of her head, more patience for you than Bojack had received yet. "It wouldn't be fair to ask him to take me in or help me so well."

"Hey, guess what. I did suggest to take her in." Bojack's hand rested on his hip as he glared and looked between the two of you. "As a matter of fact, that is the entire reason why I wanted to call this friend that was supposed to make this transition a little easier. For all of us. And I just met her this morning, so-" He tapped his fingertips on his neck as he turned his eyes up in petty thought. "-That might be one up from people around her who haven't."

"I never asked her to take me in. I know that my problems are my own." Your head turned down to where you felt the swan woman turned her expression back over to you, a softness and patience in her eyes reserved only for you. Your hand pressed and clamped on he dress beside you hand, and you turned the fabric across your skin, looking over the pink material. Your head turned up to the swan woman as you gave her a small nod. "I'll take whatever you can get me with this one."

Bojack breathed in deep as he felt the muscles on his face tense while you handed the fabric to the woman, and she gave a curt nod as she turned her eyes up and met on yours, gripping her hands on the fabric as she turned her fingertips across it. She began to raise her body up as she played her hands through the fabric, then met your eyes as she looked at you kindly and with gentle agreement.

"I'll go inside and try to tailor what I can to you, darling."

You nodded, curtly, softly as your eyes turned up and met the swan woman's eyes, attempting to the grounding and comforting. Your head turned down back to the fabric again that she left behind of the other color. The swan woman offered Bojack a warning glance that suggested the safety of you and her concern of it, and she turned as she made her way to the other end of the wardrobe with the small desk and the fabric of a strewn workshop that was behind the door.

Bojack winced as he turned his eyes away, his hand coming to rub on the back of his neck as he felt his fingeritps ease through his mane. The uncertain pout was kept on his expression as he turned his eyes over to where you sat, head turned down by the cloth in your hand. Bojack took a breath as he closed his eyes, rolled his shoulders and walked over to you, taking to kneeling downward as he reached out one hand by the space where he could have sat, but he left his palm by the soft fabric as a mode of trying to be present with you as much as he was able while he used the other hand to grip out his red phone, heavy eyelids turning down as he looked down at the screen.

"I'll call him now, I guess." He shrugged as his dry eyes scrolled through the contacts. "If nothing else, it's a sign that at least you'll know who you're agreeing to meet against." He sighed as he turned his eyes over the phone screen, stopping when he found Todd's name. "If it dosen't work out, at least we both knew before we jumped the shark."

"You don't need to worry about doing anything." Your voice was soft, exhausted, and Bojack eyes turned as he winced while he pressed his fingertip on the name. There was a flash of the phone screen, and it began to ring; Bojack sighed as he turned his eyes over to the phone screen as he heard the ringing go off. He winced, thought it over, and then pressed his fingertip on the speaker button, then sunk down beside you until his legs were entangled against one another as his eyes turned over to the phone.

"Hello. Breath analyzer delivery service. Great time to call, we just got an abundance of supply!"

Bojack's eyes heated in annoyance as he glared over the phone, ears lowered down as he heard the low clumsy voice lift up and out of it.

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh my God, no." There was a chuckle and a quick boyish remark on the other side of the phone. "Bojack, that is not you. I've spent too much time away from even thinking about you to get to the point where you would just call right around the day of my biggest release! Do you know how productive things have been since we last talked for me? I've started an entire other company!"

"Yeah, great. That's not what this call is about."

"Well, I don't know if I'm at the best time to have a random chitchat right now. I've been working on an entire bookstore worth of breath analyzer's, and my delivery team just showed up to send out any orders to get over the phone today, and I really need to make sure I'm on the best performance level I can get to make a good impression."

"How long has it been since we last talked?"

"Shit, I don't know? Enough for me to have the empty space to come up with a lot of good ideas, though, clearly!"

Bojack felt that exhausted panic and annoyed melt together at once as he closed his eyes, leaning his body back on the couch as he eased his body against it. His ears flicked back while his palm kept on his snout as he shook his head to collect his erratic thought, then opened up his eyes as he tried to recollect himself enough to speak;

"Listen, I may need you to do a favor. You need to sleep at some point regardless of whatever it is you do, right? We can have a base point on that?"

"Base point? I mean-I've actually been thinking of getting into marrying my girlfriend, and that's been taking up the majority of our talk time, ya know? Along with that, I've also been trying to get into getting these orders out sooner rather than later-the firs time the delivery services show up, there's always talk, and rep goes far, man."

"I don't-" Bojack leaned his body back across the couch as his fingertips met his eyes and made them more aware of how tired he was, his curve stomach spilling out as he eased his body back on the couch. "Can you take a break from the girlfriend thing for one night, maybe?" Hsi eyes winced as he turned his head and looked over at you; your eyes held the emotion of someone who didn't have an especially large stance. "Honestly, the fact that the woman I'm trying to take in is even having patience to hear all this and the chaos of the way it is and to not run with her tail between her legs in the other direction in and of itself is a sign that maybe this won't be a complete disaster-if you can just try to play along with me a bit. Be flexible with me."

"Is this a today thing? Or a when Bojack is in a better headspace and can think clearly and not be a giant impulsive foggy headed rude weasel about random ideas that he gets to fill the emptiness?"

Bojack allowed his hand to press down his snout until it met his mouth while the muscles on his face kept firmly tense; it was one of the few movements that came the exhaustion of his expression any amount of solace.

"I guess it would be the today definition. Tonight." His hand came to rest on the curve of his stomach as he sunk lower on the back of the couch, expression heavy. "Is that something you can do tonight? Lagre impsulive business put aside?" His eyes turned over to you to check at where your attention was in the conversation; for the time being you barely seemed present, your body turned to the side as you looked through the lef tover fabric and seemed to be trying to fit it across the path beside your body where you needed it. Bojack took a breath as he got himself up, pressing his other hand on the other side of the phone while he stepped his way further to the curtain behind the mirror, hsi eyes turning to you now and then, head turned down as he walked over to the wall. "This woman is one of those people that never stands a chance, Todd. If you saw her-It's not good." His hand came to press on his snout as he gave a timid breath. "Most people are just born, they're not chosen for anything, and then they die. I see it around the streets all the time, and, granted, the majority of the time I ignore it. Or-try to."

"Uh-huh. Sounds like typical unconcerned human behavior about the suffering of others. What's unusual about this woman? Especially for you."

"I don't appreciate the character commentary." Bojack's tone had a vague break to it as he spoke, tone giving away his true exasperation and emotional weather as his hand kept on his snout.

"I'm just trying to feel about what you want me to do here. I got a lot of people on my today, and it's pretty important that I keep focused on what my people need today, you know? Not all of us are going around just picking up random woman and for some reason feeling too guilty to take them back to his place, which I'm sure, especially for you, has nothing to do with the fact that you've had a lot of bad history with woman in the past.."

"Todd-"

"Wait, she's not one of those random strippers that you just decided to pick up and take home, is she?"

"No!" Bojack's voice raised this time, enough to the point where his head snapped over his shoulder as he realized how he had broke into the stagnant silence of the foggy and cluttered room otherwise; his head snapped over his shoulder as he turned his eyes over to where you were playing with the fabric, and your head turned up as you met him eyes insuqivelty. The swan woman snapped her head over the side of the entrance to the room as she gave him a warning in her eyes. Bojack quickly took a roll of his eyes as he turned his focus back to the phone. "She's a woman that I met on the side of the street. She's-homeless. I didn't know what to expect when I decided to take her in. I didn't expect any of this in general. I-"

"Oh, Christ. Bojack, don't tell me you're getting caught up in trying to make some lost poor woman your project for the night, or day, or any other moment of her life. No matter what kind of advantage you think you can have over a woman just because she dosen't have a certain name or power to her does not mean this won't have consequences."

"I'm not!" Bojack's voice raised again, and this time his defiance was raising to the point where he didn't bother trying to clean up the aftermath of whatever affect it had on the otherwise peaceful and cluttered space. But his palm did rest on his forehead as his eyes snapped down tenticaley, boudnig on his feet as he gave an edged statement; "Why on earth are you thinking this is what I want to do with a woman just because I took her in? Do you think that low of me?"

"Hey, Bojack, I'm just trying to sweep out all the options, is all. Maurdre and I have been planning out our future, and I'm working pretty deep on this business, so if I'm going to take a night off to do business that frankly I don't miss, with a bunch of little details I'd rather not have anything to do with, I want to at least know what I'm looking at before I step in and get my feet wet with something I know I'm pretty well off without. I don't want this to be one of those things were I come over and it ends up being one thing from the other. I think that's reasonable."

There was that genuine tone of his voice sounded gritted with an emotional wear in his tone, and it was authentic and tired enough that it caused Bojack's own defense to lower for a moment as he placed his hand on the phone to try and reground his own anxiety.

"Well-ok." He paused for a moment as he felt the heaviness of the respect coming from Todd's genuine hesitancy, and his eyes turned up as he gaze at the wall that was slung over with several strewn dressed beside him on the wall. "I can understand that."

"So should I call my girlfriend and tell her I'll be home tonight, or is there something you want to clean up-and then have stayed cleaned up? Or is this something where we should just end the call now and agree that enough is enough?"

No-I-well." His voice became uncertain, tentative and pathetic as he pressed his palm further on his snout while he looked down in front of him onto the dresses. "She's just a woman that I found on the side of the street. Nothing special, and I'm not planning on-I would never just-take a woman in just to have sex with her. It was just a matter of wanting to try to see what I could do differently today. I'm not trying to-I didn't have any other plans, is all. And I saw her across the convince store, and the asshole there was giving her a hard time, and I don't know, I got the idea that I wanted to help her, somehow. And she needs somewhere to stay, anyway, for a little while; maybe I could get her on her feet, or something, I don't know. But I want her to have someone other than me with her tonight. She deserves to have something other than, and I'm sure you know this, a guy with a bad reputation who is known for giving woman a hard time. I want to help her, I don't know why, but in some ways I'm too far gone to do or be anything useful, and I-" He paused as he gave a breath while his eyes kept on the clothes in front of him, eyelids heavy as an emptiness of weariness came in them as he kept his palm by his snout. "That's it. That's all that's going on here. Does that help?"

"Well, in terms of whether or not something weird is going to happen later, no."

"Todd, please." There was a begging to Bojack's tone now as his eeys squinted into a new desperation as he turned his eyes to the fabric. He could hear the swan woman walking over the fabric and kneeling down beside you again, talking warmly, kindly as she kneedled her body in front of where you were sat on the couch. "She deserves this. You don't have to do this because you think I should for me or anything. This dosen't even really have anything to do with me. But this woman deserves better han to go home to a man where there's a chance she might feel like she's being taken advantage of."

"Weird. Why would you be so precious about something as unpunishable like whether or not someone is uncomfortable in your space? You did it to me for years."

"Todd-" His palm gripped on the side of his arm as his glared further, ears flicked back, emotion in his eyes somewhere between apologetic, helpless, and desperate, and vaguely frustrated, both with his own baggage, and how it was confirming all of his fears for why it was a bad idea to take you in. "This isn't about you or me, ok? I know that you're the kind of guy that likes to do impsulive things and try to do wacky things adn help people. This is your chance to try and do something special. Make a difference. I know it'll feel good in the long run." He stepped to the side as he began to pace, kicking over some of the fabric that was lying beside his feet while his finegrtip gripped on the phone, trying to ignore the film of sweat that was coming over his skin while he tried to keep himself from trembling. "This isn't about anything about how you feel about me. I can even stay in my room for the night and you two can do whatever you want around my house to take care of each other. I"ll even call your dumb business guys or whatever else you want if it's the business you're worried about. I don't care. Just make sure that she has a safe night. That's the part that matters."

"Uh-Bojack." There was the sound of Todd kicking his feet as he walked across the grounds his business and the moving of his products must have been a part of-along with the nosie of his feet kicking against the ground, the white chatter of the people around him increased in the atmosphere of the detachment from the life of the people around him and the contrast of the emtoty desperation Bojack had from his end; something he had always been palpable enough about when he had known him, as he had felt to some extent with everyone.

Save for now you, the dirty woman with empty but emotionally rich eyes covered in rags.

"Are you sure you're thinking about this clearly?"

"Am I? Yes, very much. I've been thinking about it for hours now." Exasperation came over his features, focus turning on the fabric that met on his eyes as he saw the see through patterns of the dressed strung on the wall. "And yes, I cam hungover, but that has nothing to do with why I've decided to do this with this woman. She deserves somewhere to stay."

"It's just not like you to care so much about somehow else without a motive."

"Well-" Bojack's eyes turned down, and he took to scratching his neck, a reflective look of melancholy on his features now rather than jaded defense. "We have to start somewhere, right? There's new days for new ideas. Not entirely unlike your….lung analyzer company, was it?"

"Breath analyzer, Bojack. You know, you'd be surprise at the mark that is needed around here when it comes to concerned parents worrying about their kids to the point where they're willing to spend several hundred on one single analyzer that can be delivered to them today. That's where I;m getting the majority of the business from."

"No kidding." Bojack's eyes were still tentative, but there was a dryness to his intention now, and an ambition that was causing him to follow through with the cut of his inteitons, whether he wanted to or not. "Look, at the end of the day, we're both just gusy on this earth bidding out time with the inevatbel empty space of existence with whatever it is we decided to fill it with. Can we just be a team for one night while you help me with mine?" He winced, ears lowered further, his apology once again dressing over his features.

Todd gave a breath, the sound deep and full of a genuine sound of weariness, and Bojack knew the weariness had more depth behind it than he could ever be bothered to want to analyze the full existence of. But, even with his tone tired, did he speak with a vague sense of appreciation of acceptance that came along only with the amount of innocence of a rare parteince that only someone as carefree and childlike as Todd had, and only someone as questioning of such puritty Bojack was always considered taking advantage of, or blatantly disbelieving the existence of.

"I mean, sure, Bojack. I guess if you really think it's that important, I can try to make some time for it tonight. I'll try and tell the other workers and Maudre that I'll be caught up in a friend thing tonight."

"Yeah. Right. Friend thing." His eyes turned over to the wall, eyes vacant as he felt both relief and his heart drop at the same time; taking you over to his place would be official. His palms came to grip on his elbow as the majority of his expression now was one of apology and that tender, innocent uncertainty from his own end of things with anything he ever did.

"Well, thank you for clearing that up, anyway. I think we'll be coming over sometime in the afternoon. Maybe give it five pm, depending on whether or not she wants to be apart of the goddamn downtown parade today." He placed a hand on his hip as his back hand curled on the side of his body as he turned to watch where you were caught up in having the stout swan woman dress her rags around you, your own expression having a softness to your eyes, gentle humor leaving your lips as you laughed and allowed yourself to be caught up in the much more natural and soothing conversation of the soothing swan woman than Bojack had ever been able to give you yet that day.

"I mean, it makes a little bit of sense as to why I could maybe help you out. Just bad timing with the new business and all the stuff I have going on." The workers in the background of the phone call were conturining to talk and mutter to one another, adding onto the buildup of the interval of the noise of Todd's life. "How long has it been, exactly?"

"You mean since we last talked?" Bojack winced as his eyes turned over where you were sitting on the couch, your red eyes lost in the comfort of how the swan woman was talking to you lowly, her hands threading across your bandages while her eyes turned up to you kindly now and then through the softness of her words. "I think it was about what-three years?"

"Hey, who's counting, anyway. I just wanted to know for measuring purposes so when my brain starts to become more fogged over with whatever comes up when I'm around your general air of existence again, I can figure out and measure how long it'll take me for my head to clear again once this is over."

"Yeah, Todd, I get what you're saying. I know that it's not an elated concept for us to end up and hang out together again."

"Nah. Not that. I've moved on, including baggage. Hey-watch where you put that damn breath analyzer!"

Bojack winced as he pressed his hand on the speaker of the phone, turning it away from his cheek while he felt his expression grimace at Todd's voice raising up. His ears flicked back as he heard Todd giving out minute and quick instructions for the people beside him in his childish, boyish tone of his demand while he talked to the people around him in his high pitched and angered but energetic voice.

"Look, dude, I get the general idea." Todd's voice concentrated back to the phone, and Bojack kept his palm gripped on the other end of it as he began to release from where he had his palm pressed over the speaker, lowering the tension in his body as the grimace on his face fell. "Come over to Bojack's house at around five pm tonight. This woman that you're having such good and pure intentions with-it dosen't make sense why you would have such intense and focused intentions for someone like her. Or-anyone. What's the idea of where it's going?"

"What's..the idea?" Bojack spoke the words slowly, testing them as he felt the subconscious question easing behind his mind. "I don't know. There is none. I just want to do something nice for someone. Is that so hard to believe?"

"Just seems a little random field, is all." Bojack strained his senses as he listened to where Todd's feet were kicking on the floor, moving what was the sound of several differents items around him from the plastic shelves. "But hey, man. If this is something that you're getting into, and we gave both agree we're going into this with a clear head and hopefully better intentions than any other time and this isnt't going to turn into some weird stripper parade, I don't see why not."

"Great." Bojack's eyes were lowered as he rolled his shoulders back, taking in a breath as he tried to roll off the odd feelings of embarrassment at the portrayal Todd was giving him. "That sounds like the best I could ask for."

His tone was tired, and there was a strain to his voice as he spoke, hitched with a vague hiccup to the way he spoke. Your head turned up from where you were watching the swan woman talking erratically in front of you, her narrow eyes turned down as she spoke quickly with her hands threaded across the fabric that was eased in front of your legs. Your red edged eyes, sweet and guidning, turned over as you met Bojack's expression, and gave him a small raise of your lip as the sweetness of your expression met his; and in an odd way did it feel like a clear of his own emotions as he felt his eyes dim into a somber concentration and odd wisdom in the wake of your pale and soft expression, the turn over of all the chaos and negative emotions or any narratives that polluted his head being torn away from the simplicity of the focus of your eyes and the emotion in them; dirty face and the acceptance of your life and situation and your survival and the impossibility of it all turning in front of him into an endurance of clarity.

"Great. I'll be there in five jiffies."

"Can I have a genuine estimate of when that is? I still don't speak your quirky language after all thai time."

"Five hours. Give me some time to talk to my girlfriend, my workers, my businesses traders, my customers-"

"I get it. Busy man." Bojack sighed as he closed his eyes while he tried to enoy the vague feeling of a settlement coming over his disposition that he had at least gotten one thing cleared up; there was still nothing but fear that surrounded him, negative cautions of an odd disorienting nostalgic heartbreak surrounding him that came along with something that he dared to believe had a true influence over him, rather than a passing facade of any genuine coherent meaning or influence. The emotions that were turning over him felt not entirely unlike a memory of something that hadn't excited yet, but even just the idea that it could, and the fact it hadn't, was offering him an impossible turn over of doubt and emotion. "Thank you for doing this. Anything you do would help this woman at this point."

"Bojack, I gotta ask. Why are you doing this?"

"I don't..know."

"Bojack-"

"I don't. I'm telling you I don't. It's like-" He paused as he kept his hand pressed on his forehead, fingertips turning into the back bangs of his. "It's like she's this woman that is this cold, sad, lost pathetic thing. And I have this…warmth that I feel like I could give her. A place, an identity. Something to believe in in whatever her desperation is, I don't know. I feel like we're both on this large, massive plate of cold and hurt and vastness-and for whatever reason, it feels good to go to one another and to offerher a place where, for a little while, she can feel like she even has a place." His eyes darted down as his palms gripped on the side of the suit he had placed over his shoulders. "Does that make sense?"

"Barely. But-I do understand the sentiment." Todd's voice was lowering into a somber authentic understanding as he shoved his way over the door that must have been nearby; the noise and the muttering behind him began to fall away as he stepped his way inward with the door shutting behind him. "Hey, the important thing is that you keep yourself to something that gives you an identity." Bojack's feet stepped back as he jolted while he heard Todd kicking something beside him in what must have been a fairly closed in closet space. "One of the reasons why I would even help you with something like this is because I feel like that's something that you always needed."

Bojack's ears perked up. "Yeah?"

"If this woman has any chance of helping one less person that I've met around here that's just a stumble weed of bad thoughts and suffering and worrying about doing all the crazy stuff that comes out of feeling that way, then I guess I could try to be apart of it. Makes one less dysfunctional thing happen for when I'm trying to get the business out, at least."

Bojack grimaced, but he tried to keep the exasperation enclosed. "I'll try to ignore the suggestion that you're only doing this for the sake of keeping your business upright, but-again. Thank you. She-" He paused as he gave a breath while he tried to collect the dismemberment of his thoughts. "-She is something that gives me something that separates me from the bullshit going on in mainstream life every day. I used to think doing something like that was boring and irrelevant and not useful and would just be weird and niche, but-I'm done doing the mainstream thing for now."

Tod chuckled, lowly and with a vague teasing amusement. "When have you ever been a mainstream guy? I couldn't even get you to be excited about my marshmallow ball bash in the middle of your living room, and that as with as many people interested as much as I'm working with now."

"Mainstream as in sex and drugs and not caring about shit, Todd. The general spiritual alignment of just letting life roll you around and not giving a shit about anything, is what I mean." His body turned fully over to where your head was now turned down back to the swan woman again. "I think I want to try something else for once."

"I mean, you've had plenty of girlfriends."

"Not like that. That was..I don't know what any of that was. I want to be patient with something, for once. To approach it with more than just a detached headspace of thinking its just the same as anything else. Of bad. Stagnant. A distraction from the idea that nothing will ever be anything." He sighed as his eyes turned up to where your hands were now be gently cradled by the swan woman's fingers, her eyes turnd up as she met yours while she finished settling the colorful rags on her palms across your wasit, talking to you in a low and warm loving tone that he could only imagine executing. "We're all in the same shitty sphere anyway, all doing the same thing every day and having to be surrounded by the same atmospheres and situations anyway. This woman is going to go back out there into the world and have to deal with the emptiness, the bad thoughts, the bad men using her for sex-God knows what else. And I'll go home and have to deal with my own thoughts. The least I can do is try to make it a little easier for each of us for a little while." He paused, taking a reset of a breath as he rolled his shoulders and kept his tired gaze on your body. "I'll see you in a little while, ok?"

"Hey, things will turn out in ways I'm sure no one ever even expected eventually. Just take it one foot at a time and try to enjoy the ride. That's what life is all about, anyway."

"Is that how you managed to get this far with the business?"

"One way of looking at it. At least I'm going after things that matter with actual stimulation and people caring and not going into some path where no one follows and becoming increasingly more maddened and stagnant over a period of time where I execute energy where it's not needed and wonder why I feel so terrible all the time. Life is just about going where connection goes and if its not there, you hang out, you know? I didn't have that direction for a long time, a way to connection, so I just hung out. Didn't want to, and had no choice anyway, but I'm not going to execute energy where it's not needed."

"Is this an allegory about me?"

"No." Todd chuckled, and there wa the sound of his hand reaching out to the plastic bins while he placed them on the floor-they clattered to the ground clumsily, and Bojack winced as ears splayed back while he stepped backward. "I'm not sure why it would. You've just been drinking for years anyway, right?"

Bojack's fingertips eased across the phone as he squeezed it, and his eyes winced before he rolled his shoulders, reset his breath, and spoke;

"I'll see you at five."

He placed his fingertips on the phone ending button, then placed his phone in his pocket as he began to step over the several bits of clumped dressed that surrounded the floor, arms turned forward as he began to walk over to where you were still lost in the warm conversation of the swan. He stood in front of the two of you as his eyes fluttered between you both before either of you raised your heads, but even the small and minute soft feminine conversation was enough for him to feel at least somewhat entrailed in the conversation and soothed by the gentleness the swan was giving you that Bojack had never been given in his lifetime; an emptiness behind the distraction, but still was it something to fill up the black of his mind waiting on the other side otherwise.

"You know you're one of those women that just carries around this natural way of giving out a light with you. No matter the circumstances, that's who you are. I admire you for that. Not everyone has a natural home inside of themselves, darling-" Her white hand reached out and grazed on your shoulder, and your eyes raised up to hers, turning away from Bojack while your expression met on her eyes. "Must be the reason why that empty husk stumbling man decided to come around and try to follow you this afternoon. Use him for whatever tool you'd like; he seems to be begging for it tonight."

'Hey, ladies." Bojack cleared his throat as he watched where there was a soft amusement on your expression; your head turned up to Bojack as he stepepd forward with his fingertips playing while he looked between the two of you. "I think it might be time to wrap this up. And I do mean that literally in this case-so, please."

The swan woman blinked as she turned her narrow eyes back to you; she gave you a playful wince, and squeezed her fingertips across your wrists. You laughed as you nodded at her gently, turning your eyes down to where your wrists were threaded across her fingertips as you started to get yourself up from the new see through green rags that were dressed around your body. Your head turned as you looked over at Bojack, and he gave you a raise of his smile, reaching into the tentative gentleness of his eyes, a peace easing across him only he could manage that made him feel he could be worthy of the execution of a pure kind of peace, if even for a moment.

"He has that look to him, too." Your red eyes turned across Bojack, your feet stumbling as you tried to ease yourself up into a balance. Bojack's teeth poked as he walked forward and reached out a hand to you in a natural instinct, but the swan woman got herself up behind you and wrapped her palm on your wasit, her narrow eyes looking over at Bojack in that hard glitned way that would suggest that he was less worthy of the same kindness she so naturally offered you; a sentiment he had long since flet himself becoming used to. But your tone was kind, right along with your eyes, and his eyes winced as he turned his head back over to you, ears lowered, ad he found all of the baggage of the usual negative patterns falling away as he focused on the concentration of your energy while you looked up at him, tired, sickly, but more emotive than he had ever felt bonded by.

"That kind and pure look, the simplicity of being human the way that things should be. There's a rest to taking it in-and no matter what else, I'm glad I found it. I'm glad I got to spend some time with an enduring pure heart; they're the hardest to find on any given day." Your head turned over your shoulder and to the swan woman just as she kept her palms by your waist, and your hand reached out and eased your hand on her palm while you helped her turn her hand away. "I think I have all the things I came here for. Thank you."

"If you're sure." Her narrow eyes flew up to Bojack again, and there was an abrasive and hard look on her narrow eyes that flashed through her expression for a moment as she gazed over at him in caution; Bojack's teeth poked, but whatever defense he felt was fogged over by your words; there was a heart wrenching timelessness to the meaning of them, not unlike the way he felt about the length of a long, hard and complicated life that had stretched out and become increasingly more so as he had gotten older; the impossible bittersweet feelings that overpassed in time from memories of when he was a kid t the reflection he had as the man he was now; the reflection of the heart wrenching bitterness of what it felt like to be alive, and the feelings that he had changed so much, and yet not at all.

"Never heard that one before. From anyone." His eyes turned over you as he watched the delicacy of your feet step over the clothes, your feet tripping over the bundles of the fabric. You tried to walk over to him, but the soles of your feet abruptly tripped forward; Bojack's eyes winded as he stepped forward and gripped his hands on your wrist, and the muscles on your face treamored as you allowed your body to be raised up, his palms gripping on your arm as you allowed your body to be raised up.

"Careful." His head turned to the side as he helped you up from where you had tripped over the clothes with a grunt. Your eyes turned over to him as your feet stumbled, his hands raising you from the clothes as you tried to stand upright. Your eyes turned up to Bojack as your expression turned acorrs his eyes, and he managed a vague grunt while he pulledyou from wher eyou almost tripped over the fabrics. "I don't need to worry about taking a face planting woman home if I can help it. The both of us being able to land of our two feet, and healthily, is something that we should both focus on to make these next few…days, weeks, whatever as best as possible."

"There's too many people in this world to ever be truly known by most, after all. People don't create because they're not creative, they don't create because they don't have love in their lives. They don't meet the people on the gritty and empty and indifferent road to make them find the other person that would make them something other than flesh and bone." The swan woman's words were breathed more than they were spoken with the weariness of her voice, her eyes lowered down to the reaming fabric as she pressed her palms against the cloths. She raised her stout body up into an upright position as she gazed between the two of you, one hand on her hip. "You're lucky to have found someone who gives that peace even for a little while. Not everyone has something that they meet in this indifferent, empty path known as existence to make them feel like something other than physical soulless technicalities. Especially you, sweetheart." The swan women's eyes narrowed as her expression turned to you, and your eyes turned to met hers with a look of understanding in the softness of your lost expression, bewildered, but wise and accepting. "Stay with the man if he makes you feel even just a little more clear headed. We all need to escape the complications our brains can come up with and keep our heads up to anything more simple, human. The journeys of most people are never heard, but often more complex and eccentric and interesting than any of the ones we'll hear out here in the mainstream." The swan women's eyes flashed over to Bojack as she turned her stout body over to the entrance of the office, easing her elbow forward as she began to walk her way inside behind the desk. "Everyone is human so everyone has the same needs, and the same needs involve going after flawed humans, which in turn makes them flawed, too-but it all comes form the ironic desire of wanting to be connection. And the circle continues. Having a good heart has nothing to do with it, since there's something far more important going on in people's lives other than the good heart-it's humanity, which is messy and desperate and easily mnaiaulted, but it's what we're the most attracted to in someone else, because we, ourselves, as we are, are human, and it's all we crave. Having a good heart is a one dimensional field."

"Are you always preaching these speeches to your customers?" Both of Bojack's hands were kept on your palms as he turned his eyes to your body and helped you over the rest of the clumps of the fabric, your head turned down as you tripped over his feet while he helped you over the heaps of the fabric.

"Only when I see people who can carry the vessels of complexity with them from hearing it. The way I see it, there's two ways of being; the people who are too small to know or care how small they are, one dimensional and stupid, and the people who see everything and themselves for what they are and suffer; but at least they see it."

"Thank you for letting me come over here to try on new things, anyway." You turned your head over your shoulder as you met the swan's eyes. You kept your feet over the fabric of the rest of the clothes while Bojack stepped back and helped you over to the open door of the cluttered entrance, his hands eased on your palm as he let one of your hands go, though he kept the caution of his focus on you; there was an impossible delicacy to the way you walked, your hands pressed against his palms as he began to ease you to the door.

"The flashiness of whatever people are doing to distract themselves is going to come and go." The stout swa stumbled her way out of the back door from her study as she looked between the two of you with a curt nod. "You were right to tell your friend the reason why you wanted to do this."

"As long as she gets something out of it." Bojack's eyes turned to you as he looked over you tentatively. Your focus turned back to Bojack, and a softness eased on your features as you gave him a nod, and a contmenet eased into your eyes that for a moment almost gave Bojack himself peace, though the caution and the empty and negative build up and narratives on the other side of it were far from anything he could anticipate leaving.

"I'll take anything." You seemed more open this time, meaning it, and your eyes that were edged with exhaustion and vaguely busted veins eased across his eyes, and the softness of purity on your expression was almost more than he could process; especially in the way it seemed intended to affect him. You laughed as you shrugged your timid shoulders. "It's not as if I have a lot of options anyway."

Bojack's eyes turned down, empty and stoic, but he shoved his elbow to the door behind him as a he grunted, tripping behind his feet as he made his way out. There were already some blares and music that was coming out from the other side of the street; the parade was beginning to raise up into the amusement tof the quick blaring of the superficial impulsivity of people Bojack had long since come to loath, the neon glaring of the colors surrounding him as he snapped his head over his shoulder to where he saw the people marching across the street.

"If you need a distraction, there's some things we could do with equally aimless people down the street." His expression was a bit dry, but the emotion on his face was one of good and genuine intention as he gave you a raise of a smile, turning his eyes over to you as he helped you out of the door. You tripped over the front of the bottom entrance of the door and began to walk your way out, your head turning over your shoulder as you looked over to where there were mothers, children, families and other people occuipued in the marching that came across the street, colors flashing from the waving flag and the whipping of the clothes of the people that were walking past through pop music. In contrast, your face looked almost unfahtomableypathetic and dirty, your eyes even more apoogetic and helplesness than they were before; but there was an even more demanding humanity there.

"What is the occassion for?" You looked over to where your hands were encased by Bojack's as you made your way outside, the dry exhaust of your eyes turning to the parade as Bojack stepped you back out to the narrow street.

"Who knows." Bojack patted the front of his chest for his keys, his palm pressing agaisnt the bludge of the keys as his face lightnted up, and he turned his palm into his pocket as he eased his hands on the metal. "As far as I'm aware of, probably just something to do with some dumb theme or celebration of something some guy or woman did that got their attention enough to get out of their weed adeled apartments for awhile-someone of my stature, maybe. If it was anyone bigger than only people who talk on the news would be allowed to acknowledge it. Either that, or some crackheads just decided to come out and start marching. Either way, it's guaranteed that it's not important." His eyes lowered as he turned his hands back on your wrists again, helping you over to his topless speed car that sat on the other side of the buildings. He pressed his hand on the button as he made his way to the car door, turning as he met your eyes to see if you would follow as he gripped his hands on the car handle and helped you inside. Your eyes turned over to the parade and the implosion of it; and as another large firecracker was set off, your eyes widened, hands gripping on your arms as you stepped your way back; Bojack's eyes snapped over to the parade as he heard a large cheer, and the vague distant sound of laughter hat came along with sudden neon confetti that was burstin across the crowd.

"Christ." Bojack's eyes lowered as he looked over to you. "You'd think they'd learn how to be less annoying, or that I would at least get used to it. But they always manage to outdo themselves with the showcase production every time."

Your eyes kept on the bursting of the parade, and though one of your slender and dirty hands were keping by Bojack's embrace, your attention was turned to the crowd. Bojack felt the tension of his abrasive annoyance begin to lower as he recognized your genuine curiosity, wincing as he turned back to the door and shut it behind him, stepping forward a few inches.

"Do you want to check it out, see how stupid it all is?" His eyes turned tentatively across your profile. Your eyes dimmed, and after a moment did you give a nod, turning your eyes over to him as your hands squeezed on his.

"At least let me see if there isn't any free food for later."

"Oh. Yeah." His eyes turned down, oddly guilty, ears flicked back, and he followed where you began to stumble your way past the buildings and over to the front of the bustling and imploding street. Bojack's teeth poked as he stumbled over his feet while he began to follow you over the edge of the street, and as he came behind you, eyes wincing and with a natural apology across his expression as his eyes turned over to you now and then did he feel both gentleness for the genuine cusitory in your eyes, and at the same time an odd caution being in front of so many people in the town at once again.

"I usually try to avoid these kind of bustling and neon color scenes." His eyes hardened as he looked over the people that were talking and screaming to one another loudy, their teeth shined and poked out and the energy in their eyes meeting their openly flashed and curved bodies as they boomed their way throgh the sreet, several different streamers and other implosive party levels turning up through the air as the confetti busted through the sky. Your eyes turned as you looked over at his side profile, his ees empty, but his air one that spoke he would follow you. He shrugged as his tired eyes eased in front of the colorful celebration. "Usually just full of idiots who spend their time partying like this because they don't know anything else. At least I prefer to drink on my own and know that I have nothing to celebrate."

The people, besides the neon colors, were continued to shimmer under the extent of the grey sky that was passing over their bodies. By all techcncilaites, it seemed like everyone was someone from all over the two; there was no specific species, no specific way of going about the way people were talking or moving or having conversation with their loved ones, or anyone at all. There was no spefific arrangement, but as Bojack turned his eys over the chaos, your slender hand still itnetwied on his palm while he looked the party over, bustling forward, did he feel a black cusitory get the best of him.

"Why are they doing this?"

A large pink woman, a lizard type with pink shirlls and a dress, bustled by the both of you. Bojack's hand flashed out, gripping on her arm. She turned her head over her shoulder as she looked at his hand with surprise, and then witha avuge judgemnt when her eyes saw his expression. His stout body and plush body added to his helplessness as his teeth poked while his eyes turned up to meet hers, ears looked, especially pathetic and timid.

"Hey. What is all this for? What are people celebrating?"

The lizard woman's eyes widened as she turned her head over to Bojack, and her shoulder turned down from where he tried to reach his hand out. Her eyebrow raised up as she looked between the two of you.

"Are you Horseman?"

Bojack groaned, eyes turned up, ears flicked back as he looked at her with hardened eyes. His hand reached out and caressed on your palm as he pulled you in, and your feet stepped forward beside him. Your body was trembling, and Bojack could feel the fear you felt even just from being around the parades of people in front of you.

"Listen, this woman here just wanted to see a little bit of a show. Is there any chance that we could be told what this is?"

The lizard woman chuckled as she turned her head over to where the people were walking and bustling beside one another, their hands turned up on the flags that surorudned them. The lizard rolled her shoulders, turning her eyes up as she gave a shake of her heard.

"When I first heard of the event, I thought everyone here was on crack, honestly. And some people probably are. But being around this kind of crowd, the amount of spiritual hope that's surrounding them and the richness and gratitude they have-" She chuckled as she turned her searching eyes over to the moving crowd.

"It does make me feel a little bit of gratitude, knowing that people here are full of so much life and celebration" Her narrow eyes turned over to you, eyes flicked across your body. You felt your timid apology in your air by being perceived by her taking over your dirty skin as you stepped yourself back, hand squeezed against Bojack's. Her lip raised up as her eyes met across your body.

"And this woman. She reminds me of some of my harder moments in life. The emptiness of her."

"You do know she's right here, right? She's homeless, not incapable of understanding what's being said around her."

"I don't mean to try to take away any little mundane comforts she can get. You're taking her in for a night?"

Bojack's ears flew back, his teeth poked as his eyes turned over her body in defense, and you stepped back further behind Bojack's body, your cheek rested on the back of his shoulder.

"You know what? None of your business?"

The liard laughed, her supple lips dressed in a red hue of lipstick easeing across her mouth as she turned her head up. "I was just trying to offer some more questions. We're all here aksing things. I just wanted to offer my own."

"And yet you failed at the concept of actually answering them."

The lizard woman shrugged her head turned over to the side as her eyes reflected across the colorful parade of the people passing by.

"Families, different woman and people all came around today. We've all been talking about it on our various groups for the past few weeks. We could all feel it coming on-the need to celebrate."

Bojack raised a brow. "Celebrate what?"

The lizard woman rolled her eyes. "Well, it may sound like something that's something only bored druggies may come up with around here in these parts, but-the celebration of the idea that some spiritual alignment has come into its full chart lately. I don't entirely believe in these kind of things, but I thought it would be good for me to be apart of it, anyway."

"Spiritual alignment?" Your voice was tentative, your cheek rested across the back of Bojack's arm. He turned his head as he looked at you and met your worired and wretched eyes; the amount of life in them despite the clear pain of someone who had long since had the zest ripped out of them was still one of the most compelling forms of the grudges of humanity he had seen in a long while.

"Ah-something the people around here have probably more than likley made up just for the sake of wanting to do every drug in the book and as an ecuse to wave their flags and have a good time togehter-but, yes. Some people like to believe that there's a certain 'level' that has been reached every year, or that if a certain group of people starts to feel like there's a richer sense to love and life the way things should be, people begin to chart out the idea that the energy of the world has reached a new essence, a new way of being able to reach further humanity. Every problem, every way of which the world has failed itself and one another has become a little bit easier and a little less likely to happen because of whatever it is that these people believed happened today and are celebrating."

"What triggered it this time?" Your palms gripped across Bojack's arm, and he winced as he looked over a you. You were bolder only by your curiosity, your cheek resting beside his arm. "Was there a specific idea or event? Or just an idea?"

"If you ask me, the entire thing was just an idea of word of mouth more than anything else." Her eyes narrowed as she looked over her shoulder to the bustling crowd, then gave a shrug as she turned her eyes up to the confetti being blown. "But-funny that you asked, because this time, there actually was a reason. A speiffic idea that people were talking about how in this level of the world having a little bit more chemistry, a little more alignment ot the world as the way it should be, was in the form of two people coming together." She shrugged, casually, as her eyes narrowed while she turnd her head over to the crowd, still coming forward like a sea of color. "Granted, I don't know if they meant romantically or if they just meant the idea of two people physically meeting for whatever reason, but I do know that there was a certain hope, almost magic in the way people talk about it-enough that I felt inspired to come crawling out of my own apartment for the day and come out and see what all the celebrations as about. If I have to hear it, I may as well see it. Not all of us can afford to live on the pinnacle of isolation in Beverly Hills."

"Jesus." Bojack placed a hand on his hip as his eyes hardened while he turned his eyes to the crowd. "That does sound pretty stupid."

"I thought so, too. Until I saw the drawing someone made who felt it the most; I don't know how to explain it. It was the kind of hope that was incredibly real and grounded in reality, and yet that as the reason why it took me away how incredible it was. It was dressed in something melancholic, in a sense, grounded in how empty and terrible and apathetic and inhuman the world was most of the time, people with entire stories being thrown like garbage to the world and with no silver lining. The picture of these two didn't distract me from the reality of the species we live in, but it was like a golden dug out nugget of a feeling that came despite the impossibility; not unlike seeing into something were there was a strange profound truth that I was looking into that cultivated only the kind of enduring good and wisdom that can come from the ones who suffer to the point of extreme black, and somehow still have that specific deep, profound incredible detailed feeling that only comes from the preciousness and the rarity of being loved."

Bojack winced as his ears turned back, emotions hard as his eyes turned over to her, emotions hidden but protruded with a curiosity. Your cheek rested on the side of his arm, and though the action was foreign, the feeling of your skin across his body was enough for him to feel an odd grounding of puritty that felt more natural even in its initial introduction than any other practice ever felt.

"Anyway." The lizard's tongue forked out as she turned her eyes back over to the crowd, hand sticking into the booklet in her pocket as she pulled it out. "It's good you're taking the girl in for the night. One less lost and aimless, soulless person who has long since lost their humanity because they couldn't find their footing, after all."

She handed out the pamphlet in her hand over to the two of you; Bojack's eyes turned down as he looked over to where she handed over the advertisement for the day's event. He winced as he placed his hand on it as he looked over the image; in front of it was the painting of the messy and watercolor silhouette of two people; they were of no particular species, but the blotches of two forms that were intertwined against one another through what was an otherwise empty pamphlet. There was a vague watercolor surretlity surrounding the two of them that would suggest something that looked alluded to the sky; a watercolor vast hue of the blue that was surrounding between both of their bodies with a speckled white blotch surrounding them. Bojack turned over the cover of the first part, looking over the pages that were full of what looked like quickly typed information, but still with a sense of passion to it, and beside the paragraphs, several different diaphragms that looked like calculated forms of energy that were drawn beside the 's eyes turned over to you in curiosity, and you stepped forward as your eyes turned over the pages, curistory in them, though your hand was kept gripped on his arm in a way that suggested just how helpless you felt, especially int he wake of the noise surrounding you.

"Keep it if you'd like." She gave a shrug as she crossed her arms, her eyes turned back to the stumbling and roaring of the crowd as she looked over spectively to the crowd. "None of this espcially matters to me, really. I came for the noise. It's not very often you get to see people around here getting along."

"That's ok." Bojack's eyes dimmed as he closed the pamphlet, and he handed the paper back to the woman. She turnd her eyes to it as she gripped it by her hand and pressed it back under her arm. Bojack's hand came to grip on your palm as he stepped his way back away from the pounding of the parade. "Thanks, though."

The lizard stepped back into the street, offering you both a vague curt nod before melding herself back intot he crowd. Bojack turned as he looked over at you as your eyes turned down, and Bojack felt something bitter and impossibly rich strike into his disposition at seeing the dirt and the emotional bewilderment that eased across your features as your eyes turned down in thought; there was the desperate need to take care of you, the pain so black to the point at the absence of the lack of apportieness of not being able to do that making him feel it so intensely that for a moment he almost forgot who he was.

"Parade, weird spiritual shit, people going around and spreading crack and rumors. All set?"

Your hands came to press on your arms, but you gave a nod , and your head turned up as your eyes met his as your lips turned up. A watery gratitude passed across your features as you gave him a raise of your lip, and it was both bittersweet and emotionally exhausted in its weathering.

"I'm ready to go."

"Great." Bojack gave a curt nod as he placed a hand on his hip while he turned his eyes back over to the parade. He placed a hand on your back as a winced in his timid fashion while he dressed his hand on your back and helped you down the street, yourself turning as you began to walk down the road. "I didn't think weird stuff like hopeless romanticism still existed around here, but I guess people will dream up anything for the sake of still having the belief that anything good can feel good outside of drugs and alcohol."

"I think it's sweet." Your tone was dreamy, reflective, and somehow the pain Bojack felt for the richness he felt for you and the bitter odd loss he had for how much of his life had passed without this feeling that he couldn't help but overpower him, whether believed in or wanted or not, was making him sharper than he had ever known. "At least it means that people are doing something. Anything that adds onto that connection, even for a little while. Everything else is just a measurement of getting emptier and emptier until some can't even recognize themselves as human."

"Of course you would think that. You got that-patience, or wisdom…something to you. Most wouldn't be able to see the long term value of that-or any value at all."

"And do you?" Your voice was thrilled up, vaguely amused as much as someone could be in the natural tired nature of your tone. Bojack pouted as his eyes turned down, empty and uncertain.

"I'm more likely someone who will do th wrong thing for as long as they can until it kills them. Life long lesson I've always learned that I don't think I ever not will."

"Well." Your hand reached back and caressed across his palm; he turned his eyes up as he felt the dirty grim of your slender hands eased across his skin. "You're doing the right thing today."

"It's one day. But I try." His eyes turned up as he kept his hands eased on the middle part of your back while you continued to step your way forward and over to the topless red car. The noise from the paragde was increasing, the large neon edge of confetti imploding as it turned across the air. He leaned forward to the door as he reached his hand out and pressed ir on the handle, giving you an exhausted and emty eyed smile, the the strength of the senitmnet was still there as you began to kneel yourself inward.

"I can take you home, you can use the bath, the pool, whatever you'd like." Bojack shrugged uncerintly as his fingertips pressed on his wrist while he shut the door, and your head turned up to him as you gave him a small grin. Bojack quickly stepped over his feet as he made his way to the other side of the door, turning as he looked over the parade a last time; a bittersweet feeling came over him at the blotted silhouettes he had seen. His ears lowered as he gave a breath, and he opened up the handle as he swung it open and began to ease his way onto the chair. He began to start the car, tapping his fingertips nervously as he began to back it up, his eyes wincing as he turned his eyes to you to make sure you weren't being ruined just by the car alone; there was something delicate about you, and he felt every quick pace of his own delicate humanity; one of which was walking on a thread of sanity enough as it was, with very little to blow it over into destruction from emotional or physical madness, was intertwined into yoru own impossible frgaility.

"You should be proud." Bojack cleared his throat as he spoke the words, his eyes turned over to you as his ears lowered. When your exhausted eyes turned back to him, he gave a wince as his expression met your own. "You should be proud that you have that fire in you. To keep surviving, but to also fight for your humanity. Not everyone does that. In some ways I would almost think its a sign of a strong human essence that is especially connected to its rich nature and the injustice around it if somewhere were to either gointo survival mode or off themselves if it was dniend from them too much. Not-saying that you should, obviously, I just mean that-" He paused as he sighed, and he cut himself off mid rasped sentence as he began to drive his way into the middle of the street, fingers squeezed across the wheel as he beagn to drive his way down. "I'm just saying you have a lot to feel strong for, is all."

A thoughtfulness glazed into your eyes; there was a consideration there so deep and so reflective that for a moment it almost looked motherly, and Bojack hardly knew what to do with the way your eyes turned down and made him feel something so compelled and rich that he hardly knew what to do with himself. But his eyes kept on the road, then turned back to you again, then back on the road, fingers tapping on the wheel as he looked at you tentievely while the buildings began to slowly pass by the two of you.

"All suffering comes from longing, of the idea of things, even safety and warmth of a home. I want to be freed from these things, to put everything under a stagance of indifference if I can; the joy and magic will be sucked out of everything, but I will be free from suffering, which I feel may kill me."

"Yeah?" His eyes turned to you, winced and extensive in his emotion while he turned from you and that impossible motherly hue and then back over to the road. "Isn't that-I don't know. Lonely? Terrible, to know you've taken away anything else from yourself that could make it all feel-good?"

"Isn't that how you've gone about your life?" Your shoulders turned over to Bojack, eyes dimmed, and Bojack winced as he turned his eyes back over to the road. He looked down to the wheel for a moment, fingertips tapped on the wheel as his eyes turned back over to the end of the road, the same place wher ehe had found you only a moment before.

"I just think that-"

"Hey-hey, you! Woman!" A loud, crazed chuckle came from the back of the car; Bojack abruptly slammed his foot on the gas pedal, letting out an abrupt yell as he turned his head over his shoulder and over to where a small, dumpy man was crossing his way down from the parade, red paint on his features, his hand gripped on his flag as he began to run his way downward. Bojack's abrupt surprise flew up along with his arm as he abruptly turned his head over the car seat, expression hardened as annoyance crossed over his features to where a small, bumbly man with stout legs began to rush his way down the aisle. A flag was placed in his palm as his eyes were bulged and crazed with joy as she stumbled over his feet. The only thing that took away Bojack's abrupt annoyance was the look of the sudden curisotry that came across your features, and then a vague amusement of something akin to joy as your eyes turnd over to the man while he rushed his way to the door.

"You lucky, sweet thing. Everyone has a chance from the start to feel the deepest joy in life or the deepest horror and pain, and who knows what it all means; but we all get a choice, don't we? It's beyond unfathomable, and whatever is watching us must have its own cocniosuness and seeing us as we do it, and I'm sure it must be a pain if there's any chance that there is also its own capacity to love. But what you've done here today, everything you've brought to these people all out there." His dirty hand, dressed in bandages and other forms and cuts on his skin reached out to pull on your palm. The thoughtful look across your features beamed up as your hand reached out and pressed on his, and with an almost cartoonish look on his eyes did he give a chuckle as he bounced on his feet and gave you another energetic nod.

'And you-" The man chuckled as he looked over at Bojack. Bojack's eyes widned as he felt the way the man's excited and eccentric eyes flashed over to him, bulged and lost in his excitement as he bounded on his feet. "Ah, thank you, for everything you've done, for everything you've opened up for us. There's no ladder to continue to climb here-now, it's just a matter of allowing yourself to feel what you've always felt to begin with; the robbing of your humanity from all the corruption people throw on the two of you, and now is the time to simply celebrate!"

"I think you might have the wrong crowd, bud." Bojack's eyes lowered as he looked over at the man. He bounced on the back of the souls of his feet as his dirty hand kept out of yours, and the annoyance and tension on Bojack's features increased as he looked forward and jammed his foot on he gas pedal, despite your genuine look of appreciation and enlightenment because of the man's excitement.

"We're all here to celebrate the opening of something pure, good! Something we lost a long time ago; and here we are, starting to find hope again, because of the small little islands of people like the two of you starting up something true, and good, and warm again!" The man's voice was now stretching out and over against the air as his hands waved out in front of him, his head snapped back into almost seemed like an animalsitc joy as he stpeped back while he threw his colorful flag up into the air, the twirl of it passing by and turning across the air as he gave a loud and cackled chuckle from his fat lips, and the sound of his laughter was one of genuine freedom and joy of someone who had long lost their shackles of being brought down by the routines and expectations of the world and of the idea that he neede to follow the heard; Bojack felt something that was akin to goosebumps raising across his skin as the man's laughter was accompanied by the words. The man's laughter thrilled up into the air, his feet tapping as he danced with his stout body tripping over his feet in his onslaught of carefree nature, and as Bojack's tired and wrinkled worn eyes turned to the rearview mirror with his eyes winced in burning exhaustion, he felt a shivering strike through his body.

"At long last! We're all going to go come! No more suffering or abuse from others who have been so clouded by the corruption of others that we can no longer see around us for what we are or anyone else-there is nothing but awakening ahead! We're all made unhealthy and crazy by our unfair circumstances-but not anymore! Not for much sooner!"

𐂃𐂃𐂃

"You can take a bath. Or the pool. Whichever one makes you feel more comfortable. I don't especially have any preference for what you decide to do."

Your began to walk your way into Bojack's living room; the empty and vast space of it was meeting against your curiosity as your hands kept on your arms, the see through of your green dress trailing behind you as your had turned up while you made your way inside. The reflection of the neon pool from the outside had added on a layer of the reflection oft he complcition of the pool dressing up against rh grey walls. Your feet stepped over themselves as you began to make your way inside, the delicacy of your step following you as you turned your head up and over the reflection of the blue water and the artistry of the blue that was reflected against the walls and the plastic curtains; something that was of a melancholic nature that added to the already empty feel of the living room.

"Again, make yourself at home." Bojack winced as he began to take the grye coat off he had put on him for the day, not entirely unlike something he had thrown on his shoulders for a strange thread of deniability of his existence as he stumbled his way inside, pushing the coat off as he placed it on the floor, his palms grazing on it as he began to walk his way to the kitchen counter. He pasused as he considered sitting by the counter and taking a drink; there was no coherent reason as to why he shouldn't, and he knew that you werne't by an means someone who was in the position for him to be especially worried about what you perceived of what he did.

But your body, already pale and ghostly in an odd way enough as it was, was beginning to step your way forward to the open of the sliding doors, your eyes turned forward as your hands kept on your arms, turning into yourself while the dragging of the see through of the grene fabrics fell back behind your body. Your hand traced against the side of the door beside you, and Bojack's attention was eased up to your body as you pushed your way beside the door and began to make your way out to the pool. Bojack's plush body was curled inside of himself as he watched you; there was something ethernal in your expression and your eyes that seemed to add a sense of ancient melancholy to the house; it didn't dress up the pain in a different way orgive it any sense of difference, but rather was it one of something that added a core inside of it of an especially remarkable wisdom despite it.

Bojack winced as he gave a grunt and began to raise his body upward, following your body and the detachment of your form as you began to walk your way out of the sliding doors. Bojack felt his own tormented inner heavy curiosity come over him as he began t follow you outside to the currently splashed overcome neon light that made up the already oddly bittersweet height that came along with being separated from humanity, whether from betterment or form something that was of failure on an emotional level; it all led to the same odd sense of detachment that was never far from suffering regardless.

The natural apology in his eyes became more prominent as he settled his plush body against the door, watching you with his ears lowered while he saw the way your body made its way to the front of the pool. Your hands were beginning to reach for the see through green rags that werre dressed around your body; your fingertips trembled across them as you began to raise the dress up from your torso and began to drag off the rags. Your head turned up as you allowed the dress to come over from your head while you turned the fabric over and began to pull it over to the side, giving a breath from your lips, and as Bojack took in the beaten and modeled exhausted extent of your skin while the light of the pool illuminated against your body, he felt something release inside of him; a detachment to other people's definitions of how things should be, of his own cages that came from judgment and hard edges, and instead onto the sudden spitutlity that came from the neon blue that came across your body, bruised and exhausted and beaten, your arms turned up above your head as your neck craned to the side of your shoulders while you began to step your way over to the illumination of the neon pool.

"Wait." Bojack's stout fingertips eased across his palm as he began to step his way to you, his eyes protruded into desperation as he began to alk over to where your ankles were now dressed in the water. His fingertips were clumsy as they grazed on his palms as he looked over your body; it wans't until now that he saw the scratches of the blood on your arms and your breasts, the dirt thatw as thrown on your body, of the yellow of the bruises that surrounded your skin, the cuts and the dirty grim that eased across your features. He placed a curled hand on his hip as he looked you over. "It's just-are you sure you can do this on your own? With your body like that? Because-" Hs fingertips played on his wrists, and then he reached a hand out. "I'll help you if you need it."

Your head turned up as you looked at him in question, eyes flittered and gentle; and then a small amsuent came on your lips.

"If you want to hold me, you can."

"Oh." Bojack's eyes proturdued, and his fingertips took to playing with his hands some more as he shrugged, eyes turned away in an odd apology. "I mean-I didn't mean to suggest that you needed to feel liek I had to, or anything, I just wanted you to know that if you're body is tired and you wanted to get in the pool."

"Why don't I get in, see how it goes, and you can watch me without feeling strange about it, since I want you to, and we can both decide where we want to go from there?"

"Uh-" Bojack's fingertip splayed quicker by his wrists, and his teeth poked as he watched you, eyes tender and uncertain, but he gave a quick nod as his smile raised up. "Yeah. Yeah. Sure. That sounds great." He waved his hand in front of him as he stepped back, delicate apology and timidness on his features. "As long as you're ok with that."

That bittersweet, exhausted smile raised on your lips as you made your way to the edge of the pool, your hands starting to grip onto the cluster of the fabric that was rested into your palm as your pale body began to turn onto the edge of the pool. Behind you, the sky, currently black while polluted against the skyline of the buildings that were dressed in their bittersweet agreement to the sky and the end of another bittersweet and conflicted day, and the white edge of the clouds were passing by from the front of the skyscrapers, some of them sill with the still stagnant light inside the buildings. His eyes turned up as he found his eyes turning over to the clump of the clouds that crossed across the buildings, ears lowered as he began to feel an oddly intimate coziness that came along with the emotional intimacy between the two of you; a certain sense of home, impossibly small, and yet all either of you needed, especially knowing the world and people as it was.

He breathed as he took in a gentle intake, his eyes turning over to where he saw the slender raise of your arm turning over your head as you began to take off the cluster of the rags that were dressed around your body and the ruffles that eased around your form. He felt both wonder and a vague bitter black come over him as he saw the way your head craned to the side while you began to raise the rest of the fabric from your neck, turning it to the side as you raised the fabric off of your head and began to cluster the fabric in your palms, then threw the dress over to the side as it fell beside the bool. Bojack's eyes were fully focused, sharpened as he stepped forward while he watched your body, pathetic, pale, helpless and forgettable begin to walk its way to the front of the illuminated pool in front of your body, and though there was nothing brought on or appreciate about the sudden sentiment, any reasonable place where the placement of the phrase belonged, he felt the desire to tell you he loved you.

"Careful getting in." Bojack's fingertips found their way by his wrist as he walked forward and over to where you were standing by the edge of the pool. Your face turned over to Bojack as his ears lowered and eyes winced, fingertips rested by his palm as he made his way beside you, stepping his way over to the edge of the neon light of the pool. He shrugegd as his eyelids turned over the emptiness in his expression as he looked over the same water that he had spent entire afternoons contemplating the conceotping of mixing in cocaine and tripping himself into the water of.

"Just been through a lot, is all. The whole thing." His eyebrows furrowed as he looked in front of him, fingertips scratching by his neck as he looked over the expanse of the water in front of him. His eyes turned upin thought as he looked over the bittersweet black extension of the clouds in front of him, the silver lining traced against the black clouds while they passed through the sky. "Had a lot of parties and weird people over over the years and-can't remember most of where it all went, so." He gave a shrug, his eyes turning down to the pool.

"I wouldn't say the standard is very high for me when it comes to being clean." There was a bitter edge to your voice, or the suggestion of it, but under your tone was there a softness of agreement to the sentiment Bojack spoke.

"Yeah-sure. Of course not." His voice was raseped, gentle, uncertain, strained with the conflcition that guided his every word, and the timid niche profundity that he carried with him was made even more so because of the atmosphere that surrounded him; an emptiness, a detachment, and yet a surreal sense of something impossibly soft. "But you deserve to know, anyway."

Your face turned over the pool as you looked in front of the luminous hue of it, and a reflection of the neon blue eased against your eyes as your lip raised in bittersweet reflection. Your ankles began to step forward, and Bojack had the instant urge to press his palms on your waist; but he stepped back in a sudden minute end of warning that he felt from the desire to touch you and the layer of warning that came along with it in his emotional complication. His eyes turned over your body as he watched the dirty, wretched, strained and scratched look of your yellow bruised body and several black spots start to become caressed by the edge of the illumination of the light that came from the pool; if Bojack had ever felt the subconscious settling coming back to his house that felt like a surreal detachment from that of which surrounded him coming home, something bittersweet from the inherent detahcmenet and profound loneliness he felt from the peopel around him he as meant to love, and the odd comfort and release he felt from being back on that balcony that felt like the release from being apart of the natural starin of existence that felt like the overpass of the view of the world was, in and of itself, giving him permission to leave the world as he knew it, an eternal release, terrifying as it was, surreal and inherent spiritual beyond anything he understood, than it was increased tenfold as he watched the delciay of your body that shook against the side of the pool. Your head turned down, thighs easing on the edge of it, and from the cut through of what seemed like the cut of the mundane and indifferent cloudy sky and the white edge that was against it was there an increased look of what seemed like a gradual separation in the sky; a neon light that a sillumanited into melancholy was starting to cut through with the blue that was peaking out from the black hue of the sky, and he winced as he turned his eyes towards the surreality of it, though he emotional beauty he felt and the warmth and comfort that was between the both of you was enough to make him feel detached from all reality even as he knew it.

You slipped, the side of the back of your foot abruptly slipping on the edge of the pool, and there was quick minute breath of a gasp that came from your mouth as your body abruptly was snapped forward and eased into the pool, clmsily as with force. Bojakc gave an abrupt breath of his own frustrated as he rushed his way forward as he felt a minute panic strick through his air while he rushed his way forward, kneeling down beside you before your body fully fell into the pool; his plush body curled in on itself as he reached his hands out and pressed his palms on your hips.

"I got it." Your body trmebeld, but Bojack gave you a vague wince of his eyes while he gave a rasped swear, his hands pressed firmly on your hips as he began to pull you away from the water.

"No, you don't." His hands pressed on your hips as he pulled you back, and he watched as he saw your hands gripping on the side of the pool as he began to help you out. His ears flew back as his hands pressed firmly on your hips while he eased you back. Your head turned over your shoulder as you felt his effort pull you out of the edge of the pool, your dirty legs halfway submerged as your upper half was clumsily handled with his hands.

"If you're going to use my pool and I'm going to have to put up with the possibility of being known for making yet another woman's life miserable, I at least want to make sure that I do it right." Another shrug of his shoulders. "And, obviously, that you're comfortable. If there's any chance that you're going to go back out and into the world, you should at least be comfortable for while you're here."

Your allowed your body to be handled by Bojack, though with how limp you were it almost caused Bojack to feel increasingly more guilty for how he handled you.

"If that's something that you want, obviously."

Your head turned down as you watched his hand ease across your wasit, and you gave a breath of something that was both laughter and exhaustion as you spoke;

"If it wasn't so embarrassing, I wouldn't be too far gone from asking you how long I could stay." Your neck turned forward as your trembling hands gripped across his palm, easing against his, and he felt a jolt through his body at the feeling of your fingertips against his skin. "I'll take what I can get, and thank you for even letting me have that choice."

Bojack breathed out a shaky and intentional breath, ears lowered as his wet eyes were illuminated across the pool while he kept his palm on your waist, and he turned his snout down as he pressed his cheek against your neck, ears lowered. The suggestion you spoke was something that made him feel nervous just to even acknowledge, as if he was the one taking up space by the act of existing as he was in the wake of your presence.

"There's something about this night." His arms squeezed across your wasit as your turned your head over your shoulder and felt him pull you in, subconsciously, if only for the relief of the both of you in that end of his uncerinity and the distraction he needed for his bewilderment. "I don't know what it is. Like there's this specific world, feeling. It's bittersweet, it's lonely, but-I feel like it's always been here, but not as much as I feel it tonight." His teeth showed as his vulnerable uncertain eyes turned over to the side of your cheek, and he felt the entanglement of your dirty hair easing across his skin as he watched you tentatively. You didn't say anything, and Bojack felt his heart quicken further in the wake of having you in his arms and what it imposed; it wasn't until he took a reset of a breath that he began to raise your legs fully out of the water, and he felt your muscles responding as your body was lifted up with his arms. "I'll hold you around the pool. I'm not trying to patronize, but you don't seem to be someone that's especially coherent right now. Would probably be the best for the both of us if we did this as smoothly as possible."

You turned your head down, giving a nod, then a lift of your body as he eased you upward from the pool. He stepped back as he grunted and helped you stand upward, your legs swaying beside you as you lost balance for a moment; you gave an abrupt breath of surprise, and Bojack give one in retrun as he reached out his hand and gripped it on your palm. His eyes winced as his palm eased across your skin as he saw you try to rebaalnce just as you were about to trip back in, and his fingertips eased acorss your palm as he saw the way you took a breath, and with a few minute efforts of his feet did he pull you into his embrace. Your body turned back as your body pressed across his torso, and his ears lowered while eyec losed as he pulled you across the embrace of his brawny form, your cheek coming to rest by his stomach, the wear on his aged features pulling you in as his cheek rested on top of your head.

"Nice and easy, ok?" His voice was especially somber, gentle as his palms caressed across your arms in an ease of communication for the two of you. "Believe me, there's no rush. There's been nothing but back and forth emptiness going nowhere around those four gray walls inside and out on this balcony for ages. No reason to rush anything."

He felt the way you gave a quick breath from your lips in amusement, your cheek easing across his skin as you pulled your embrace further across his body. Your palms rested across his arms while your touch ghosted across his skin, and he felt not for the countless times the goosebumps that grazed across his body at the feeling of your touch against his arms; there was a preciousness to it, a consideration that communicates through his body that held a depth that had been lacking behind everything he had ever done.

"I'll keep that in mind."

Bojack's eyes turned over to the water, and he gave a roll of his shoulders as his palms eased against your hand. Your face separated yourself from his chest as your body began to pull away, and there was a edge of red defeat against your eyes in the emotion of your expression, but something underneath it was even more enduring and complex, and beyond that; the slightest invitation of something that seemed like an emotional narrative of a life made only for the two of you.

Bojack cleared his throat as he indicated his head over to the pool, and your embrace separated from him as you began to ease your body against the side of it. Bojack's wretched and timid eyes kept on your as his ears lowered while he began to follow you, and after a moment of courage that he was barley aware he still had did he reached out his arms to guide across your hips, and your body turned into him. With a grunt and a push of his body, he eased himself into the water, yourself following as your body began to ease against his chest, and Bojack gave a breath of both relief and one of exhaustion as he felt your body resting across his chest. He paused as he felt the weight of your body leaning against the curve of his stomach as your body eased across his body, and his eyes lowered as he leaned his cheek on the top of your head, feeling the weight between the both of you beginning to ease into an energy of agreement; it was strange, terrifying, an foreign, and underneath it, something that had a sense of it's entire own world and energy to it.

"You can stay in the guest room bed for the night, if you'd like." His eyes were dimmed as he kept his ears lowered while he continued to ease you through the pool.

"Your heart is quickening." Your lips parted, and the worn and uncertain features on Bojack's worn face stretched into uncertainty as his eyes turned downward in thought and vague shame, though he tried to keep the rhythm of keeping that thread of knowing one another and keeping to one another as strong as he was able; there was a certainty that came from the bond you were sharing-a sense of identity where there had previously been a void of lack of identity everyday.

"I don't do this very often."

There was an edge of amusement to your voice as you spoke; "Flattering or holding woman?"

"Part of it. Most of them have too much hair in their mouths from the amount of vodka or pills they took for me to be able to tell either way."

There was a pause from your end of things, and Bojack tried to keep his focus on carrying the delicacy that came from the preciousness of him benign in the pool and the natural panic that he obtained just from being in it; on the other end of the pool was the water starting to become increasingly deeper, and his brain more foggy with panic, but his chubby hands and stocky arms pressed further across the embrace of your body, pulling you in further across the soft curve of his stomach, and the feeling of knowing one another and belonging increased.

"This is nice." His cheek leaned further on the top of your head, his footsteps becoming slower and more delicate the more he got to the deeper end of the pool. "I'm glad we're doing this."

The complications that made up the toxic narratives to make what could have been a worthwhile existence and simple headspace seemed impossible for the narratives the chaos of his mind made up, but there was a clairty as he contuiend to lazily trail the curve of his plush body through the water, your body curled against him while your cheek rested on his chest, fingertips eased and gripping on his arms, and then contracting.

"You have the body for it."

His eyes turned down to the side of your cheek "For-what?"

"Carrying people. Cradling them. Similar acts like that. You have one of the most lovable and enduring and humble, human and adorable dispositions I've ever come across." Your head turned to the skin of his chest as the intimacy of your lips guided across his skin. "It keeps everything so simple."

Bojack took another deep breath for the sake of resetting, as much as he felt he was able. The lightness of his fight stopped on the edge of the deep end of the pool in front of him as he kept his embrace by your body, heart beginning to quicken across the pool.

"You know, it's funny."

Bojack turned his cheek further by your face.

"What's that?"

"I used to think that I wanted to know everything."

"About..what?" His tone was timid, gentle, softened,

"Everything. About how people were, how everything was the way it was, how people thought, what mad eme unique verses what made other people unique. I used to know nothing."

His fingertips gripped across the matts in your hair. "And now?"

"I feel like I know too much. And now I feel this dead, empty energy of just getting up and living as the person I am every day, and watching other people do it, knowing nothing can be changed."

Bojack's eyes turned down as he felt a nervous squeeze in his chest at your words, and he rolled his shoulders as he tired to feel the courage he needed to feel; he began to ease his embrace away from having you fully in his arms as he separated you just enough so that there was enough space for him to catch the dirtiness of your face. Your red eyed eyes turned up as you met across his expression, and he felt the slightest raise of his lip as he watched you with tender eyes tentative as he reached out a thumb, gliding it through the pool water, and began to ease it under the dirt that was caked across your skin. Your cheek leaned across his palm as his fingertips eased across the dirt on your face your skin leaned across his palm as the emotion in your eyes met across his.

""Well. All the more time to try and figure out who you are to make it all a little better, right?"

His head titled forward as he gazed at you with a gentle persistence, and your eyes eased down as your chek leaned across the feeling of his thumb across your skin, the dirt starting to meld across the neon water that eased with a projected pattern of the light that turned across your feuatres.

"We can stay as long as you'd like." Your eyes turned up as you met on his, and his ears turned back, but his lip raised up in an extension of reassurance. "For however long you need to give yourself clarity of mind."

The emotion in your eyes wasn't one of surprise, but rather of a delicate balance that spoke of the rare clarity he felt you were giving one another; it was almost too human, too rich, too sweet to be of anything Bojack could handle in what had been a life of being deprived from it. The red in your eyes that suggested the countless amount of unforgiving nights began to turn away from the pool water that he eased across his features; as timid and clumsy and arguably superficial as he was, there was an increased sweetness of confidence he felt as his palms began to hold your face while he took the damp water from the pool and melded it away from the dirt across your skin.

"I'd like that."

The purity across Bojack's features increased, and the confidence between the both of you only became further as his head titled down while a further light entered his eyes. "Me too."

Your hands began to ease across his wrists as your head turned down, and your body began to detach away from being cradled against him, though your hands kept on his wrists as you began to ease your body back through the water. His eyes turned up as he met the softness of your expression as you began to step back further into the deep end of the pool, his eyes turnin against you as his ears lowered while he felt his heart quicken along with his nerves at seeing you ease yourself and him further into the water.

"Uh-." His voice was profound, tender, gentle, and with that guide of his hesitance as he felt his body being pulled with your hands and over the the empty and void part of the pool. Your eyes turned up, illumainted by the neon bleu of the pool. There was something motherly about you, and though Bojack had long since grown up from the negative things that had happened to him as a boy and the situations that had felt like a life ending punishment at the time had gradually turned into a perspective of realizing just how young and stupid and helpless he had been, the emotional wound stayed the same; in you was an endurance, a consistency that came across as especially reassurance, and he felt his disposition pause as his he began to allow his body to ease over to the deep end.

"Just to be clear." He raised up a hand as his ears lowered just as he was able to have his feet enter the deep end. He looked over at you pointedly as he began to feel his body lift from the pool, his wrists being guided by your fingers as your eyes turned over to him in question. "I don't do this whole floating above things in the water very often. As a matter of fact I'm ever barley here at all."

"We can both do something for each other for a night, then." Your fingers danced up and curled by Bojack, and the furrowed concern expressing on his features increased as he watched the way you began to lfit yourself u from where your feet had lazily been tracing between his feet and the pool at once. His expression furrowed as his teeth winced, and the handsome worn delicately that came from being worn and as experienced and emotionally intelligent with very little to any repciroction only became more nervous and boyish as he watched the enorucgament form your eyes. His timid eyes turned across your body as his ears lowered further, but even within the fog of his fear was there a clairty in your encouragement.

"Just lift your body up, and allow yourself to float. Out wrists are with one another, we're holding each other. That's all that matters.'

Bojack raised a brow, his eyes tneciaely turned over to the deep end; already was he allowing his body to raise up and against the water as he began to ease his body upward, and as he felt his eyes turning over to the melcohinic beauty that was cut through the sky above your head, clouds splitting through the edge of the neon blue light that traced against the black clouds, there was a beauty there, bittersweet and as otherworldly feeling as much as it might have been for two people who had lived a loveless life who were finding each other for the first time and discovering what that endurance meant.

"You do know we're dong this because I'm trying to wipe the dirt off of your body, right?"

"This helps me."

"You helping me bumbling around in my pool helps me?" His eyes turned down tentatively across the water, and he took an intake of a large breath, rolling his shoulders as he began to allow himself to lift up above the water. His eyes turned over to you as his body began to float through the water, his ears lowered, and his expression now entirely timid and desperate as he eased his eyes across your face. His teeth poked, his eyes turning down to your fingertips as you kept your hold on his wrists. His expression was hollowed with fear, but the neon dark blue through the sky began to ease itself further above your head, and you yourself had an eternal timelenssness to your disposition; there was further pale to your skin, your eyes softened and your disposition gentle and guidning, your hair matted and your skin dirty and scratched, but you pulled him forward gently through the water, and the pull of the specific focus of promise between the both of you increased as he began to feel his body being pulled over through the pool.

"Oh-uhm-" His eyes snapped down as he felt the full floor begin to go under him, and his teeth poked a s ge gave a sudden vague breath of uncertain breath. His ears flew back, his eyes protruded across the water as he eased his eyes down.

"Just clear your head. Focus. Nothing is going on for the two of us more than this moment. Nothing needs to."

Bojack gave another sickly breath as his eyes turned across the illuminated water, and the gentleness of the indifference of the night increased, but the raise of the constant backdrop of the noise of the city began to fall into something that was an afetrthought, and the noise of the people that occupied it. The warmth of the trial of what you gave him was a clairty that he continued to followed as he kept his wrists eased across your palms.

He chuckled, then cleared his throat as his body readjusted across the touch of your palms. "This shouldn't be that hard."

"It shouldn't have been hard for me to find my way in life. But that didn't meant that I directly did."

Bojack's eyes were still protrude into what could have been perceived as a pathetic fear and helplessness, and his eyes protruded as his expression turned up to the edge of your eyes. He laughed against, raspily as he began to allow his body to be pulled through the pool, bosy readjsuting across the water as he kept his focus on you. The dirt from your face was already gone beyond any recall, and the youth across your features was becoming increasingly more endowed, and the energy you radiate more prominent, your lips raised, your expression blearily with exhaustion, but curated and focused.

"You know you already look a little bit younger. Stronger." A vague hue of a peace overcame his expression as he allowed his lip to raise up, meeting in his eyes.

Your eyes met his with something unreadable, and yet the emotion in them seemed like the most worthwhile thing he had ever come across, and the easiest thing for him to understand-and for a moment was it almost impossible for him to conceive of the idea of there being a black catch to what he was experiencing except for the fact that it was beyond comprehension.

"And you're swimming."

Bojack chuckled, bottom eyelids lifting up in his timid response, charismatic and confident and trembling at the same time.

"For now, at least."

There was a groan that came from behind; it had no specific vocal point, but was an overall expaonse of an echo that began to pass overthrough from behind where the buildings were on the backdrop beyond the balcony. Bojack's eyes winded as his teeth poked while his head snapped up to the blue sky and the dakr blue and the hitn of it;s growing trail that as between the clouds; his eyes winced as he eased his head up to where the groan increased, and through the black clouds that made up the night was there a sound that seemed like something that was a sentiment to a distinct creaking. His eyes widend as he eased his head upward, and he gave a breath as he abruptly turned his body down from where he was floating across the water, his eyes kept wide, teeth poked as he snapped his head over his shoulder and over to the sky. Your body began to join him as you pushed yourself through the pool, Bojack's eyes winced and expanded over the sky as he snapped his head up and over the dark empasss of the sky. Your arms came to rest by the plush hip of his body, and he gave an abrupt yell as he realize he was floating above water.

"Christ." The panic in his eyes was at contrast with the wretched wear on his features as he abruptly waddled his body back to the more shallow are. His hands kept cramped by his chest as he flew his eyes back up to the sky and winced over the sky. "What was that?"

"That was the sound of an announcing arrival to the one person that you called to show up to make a night a little big mistake to an even bigger and larger vast one."

Bojack's head snapped over to the sliding doors, arms crossed against your body in natural instinct as he pulled you in. A pale man with an unshaved face and lazy eye shuddered his way against the sliding door, grey sandals on his feet, which stepped their way out through the door as he lazily turned his body out, bright yellow sweatshirt eased across his upper torso, black hair disarrayed.

Todd snapped his arms in front of him into a playful swing, crooked teeth poked out as his eyes enlightened while he swung his head out the door.

"Or is it?" His feet gave a vague tapping of his slippers as he made his way outward. He raised his elbows up in a comical fashion while his crooked teeth poked out. "Maybe it's something like will make the night even better and nothing will feel like a bad idea?"

Bojack's disposition came from one that was cautious and stepping in one of careful consideration to a lower and more mundane dim look in his eyes as his expression turned over to where Todd was tripping his feet out.

"Thanks for coming, Todd." Bojack's voice was stagnant, mundane but welcoming as his eyes dimmed and ears lowered. His arms readjusted across your body as he pulled you into his embrace, and you allowed yourself to ease against his body while you let yourself be pulled back in, his body turning over from where he had allowed himself the bleak of bravery ot float above the water with his hands in yours to know readjusting to easing his way back to the other side of the pool until his feet kept back on the surface.

Todd waved his pale hand, lazily, as he stepped his way out. His hand pressed on the top of the small bowl hat he had placed on his head, gripping a pale hand against it as he took it off, palms gripping around the side of the fabric as he turned his head up to the sky in front of him, stepping his way fully out, eyes in that wide and empty naivety that they always were.

"Hey, it gets me away from the stress of things for a little while. Maybe it'll be a trade off for a trade off."

"Is that how you ended up at the business you're running?" The dryness in Bojack's eyes became more prominent, his arms readjusted as he gave a soft swear while he kept his grip on your body, pulling you back over through the pool.

"Beautiful night, huh?" Todd's eyes winced playfully as he tripped over his feet and turned the focus of his eyes fully over to the sky in front of him; the open expanse of the cut through of the blue was easing through the clouds as the continued sound of the moaning of the clouds continued to separate through the sky.

"Well, it's definitely something." Bojack gave a hitch of a breath as he readjusted his embrace around you, then took to turning his head over to the expanse of the blue skies and clouds in front of him; the dark blue had increased along with the edge of the night sky of the blotted clouds, and the slight sound og the whisper of moanning increased as he turned his eyes over through the over expanse of the dark blue illumination in the cut through of the sky. "Wonder if it's something to do with a storm coming up." His eyes, vaguely distorted if only from the amount of alcohol he had consumed, turned over to you as his expression pouted in a curios, shy, thoughtful and graceful capacity as his eyes turned down across your expression, as if leading you to follow. There was nothing that was more aged or graceful than Bojack's way of being able to capture what being graceful meant; a deep somber ease in his brown eyes, a tension on his face, a lowered heaviness of emotional intelligence that matched with his impusilve boyishness well. There was a richness of the addiction of pulling behind the curtain of seeing someone as they truly were; terrifying and as compact and as challenging as it was, there was a forced understanding of the probelm in between the two of you, and though hard, the fact that it turned all else away and instead became a profound truth of the comepclity and intimacy of seeing someone in full was the closest thing either of you had ever known to being alive.

"Do you want to go inside?" Your eyes turned up and met his, and his pupils lowered down in quick thought. "I know we got some of the dirt off, but you still need to take a bath."

His words were uncertain, his tone off in his clumsy suggestion, but there was still an edge of sochication to it as he spoke, and within it was there something consistent, admirable, solid; and even if there hadn't been, there was an inherent attraction to what the other was that kept a certain endurance that consistently kept introducing itself to one another; a clarity of morality, purpose, and otherwise, something almost devastating in its beauty.

"Is the bath ready?" You turned your head over your shoulder, and the way your hair was matted was something that almost made Bojack wince in comparison; there was something about the way your head turned to the door, a motherly gentleness in your features, your hair easing onto the pool as it surrounded you and trialed into the water. The neon light only added an illumination further to your disposition, tracing and enlightening across your body, and somehow an extension to the dark blue that surrounded the sky. Bojack's eyes turned to the side as he gave a causal, detached shrug, as much as he could manage.

"Well, it's not ready ready, but a little turn of the faucet and it'll be fine." He turned his head up to the yellow stagnant light behind the doors as his ears lowered while Todd walked his way around the pool, coming to sit by the neon pink deck chair while he eased his body back against it, a pouted smile of boyish contentment easing across his features as he turned his head over his shoulder and to the overhang of the buildings beside him. His naive eyes were enlightened and content well enough as his eyes brightened while turning over the buildings, chucking as his expression met on the dark blue light that was coming from the cut of the otherwise black sky.

"I'll get it ready for you?" Bojack's voice pitched as his eyes turned across your expression in question, hands eased against your back; it was spoken more like a question than it was one of confidence. "You can get in get yourself washed up, and we can go from from there and see…what happens?"

"I'm not picky." Your fingers began to leave Bojack's wrists, and he gave an abrupt nod as he watched your body begin to float away from his embrace, your lips raised up as it met the comfort of your eyes, stepping back and into the depth of the pool.

"We can talk about all kinds of stuff, lady!" Todd's boyish tone came cutting through the air; Bojack's body turned around in the pool as he took the making his way to the stairs as quickly as he was able, that dry exasperated flair coming back in his eyes as he made his way to the steps.

"You can talk about whatever she wants to, and only if she feels like it. She's the guest, she gets the choice."

"Well, yeah, duh." Todd's eyes rolled in a mockish and casual way as he eased his body back against the end of the deck chair, hands pressed behind him, pale chest poking out from his robe as he inched his way to the end of the deck chair. "She's obviously the guest of honor for the both of us. You think I would have come all the way over here just for the sake of it after everything we've established about how we feel about each other?"

"Very cute, Todd." Bojack lifted his arms onto the edge of he rails of the pool, stocky body raising himself out of the water as he lifted his chubby form off of the edge of the white edge of the pool, grunting as he lifted his body off of the edge of the pool while the water fell off of his body. He raised his stocky body upward while he walked his way across the pool deck, kneeing down in front of the several white towels engraved with his initials that were on it as he leaned forward, gripping his hand onto the cloth while he pressed his snout and then arms on it; his sotu fingers were gripping it in an oddly tende fashion, and the cloth that he pressed on both arms with one hand were working on soothing the drips and water from his body; he did it in a homely and tendelry way that spoke of his essence, and your slender body walked through the neon lit water, your eyes watching the movements of his natural homely disposition. "Please make sure that you don't take her on a long endorsement of some invention you came up with or any other idea about yoru current business unless she makes it clar she wants to be apart of it for the ery short time I am gone."

He winced in an agreesisve blunt glare as he spoke the words, but Todd seemed unphased; he only gave a causal shrug of his shoulders and a boyish light laugh.

"And the irony isn't in the idea that you're speaking right in front of her and telling her what she might want out of the conversation?"

"She-we've already had some time speaking together, so I have a better idea than you." Bojack's hard eyes finished wiping the white cloth on his arms, and he grunted as he pushed the cloth onto the deck chair beside him, hands on his hips as he ketp his ears lowered while he walked past Todd and began to make his way to the stoic yellow doors. He waved his hand behind him, the glare on his face giving away a vague vulenrbaility of embarrassment as he reached out and gripped his hand on the sliding door, speaking over his shoulder as he shoved it to the side with a grunt; "Just make sure she stays content. I brought her here to give her a break. And-woman, keep Todd out of his constant trouble and always winding mind, please."

His words were strained and crumpled with grumpiness, tone giving away his insecurity at being able to speak so abrasively, and it added onto an odd feeling of bittersweetness and endearment for you from your end as you watched him abruptly walk his way through the sliding doors and then closed it behind him, ears lowered, rasped voice talking under his breath in a nervous and exhausted, conflicted and oddy tender fashion. Your head turned as you looked over to where the causal navietly adn open wonder on the unshaven man's face was taking to being content siding on the end of the chair. Your eyes turned down, amused as you began to ease your body through the water and over to where he had settled his body on the end of the deck chair.

"He's mood really does not match the way it looks out here right now, does it?" Todd's eyes gleamed a she turned his expression up and over to where the clouds were now turning further away from one another until there was nothing but a deep blue hue that was surrounding the open chasm of the blue expaonse; the vague sound of groaning was still present, a sound that was echoing across the expaonse of the tide of the empty space that surrounded the area of the ovverpass of the view of the city, nostalgic and quiet and overpowered with business all at once.

"This entire place seems like it's trying to communicate something. I love it. The specific feeling of it. The specific feeling of him." Your head turned over your shoulder as you looked over to the direction of where Bojack has almost dispeered behind the white bathroom door; already was he mumbling under his breath with one hand curled on his hip as he tripped over his feet and made his way to the bathroom, hand gripped on the white robe beside the counter as he walked his way into the halfway open door. Your hands rested on your arms as you watched him just as your body met beside the white edge of the pool; there was a handsome grace behind the curve of his snout and the way emotion dressed his face in a certain handsome royalty and stoic boysih lostness.

"Oh, yeah?" Todd gave another boyish chuckle as he watched your eyes turn back and meet his shining ones, his body contracted against the neon light in front of him that illuminated his pale face and the crooked teasing of his grin, the rasie of his eyebrows while he kicked his shoes off casually behind the pool. "And what's that like? I bet you have an entirely different persepctvie than most woman and people that come around here. But-mostly woman. Bojack dosen't have a lot of interested in people and bringing them around unless he feels he can get something out of it, ou know?"

Your arms rested on the side of the pool. The heavy sound of the sky increased; rather than lighting, it sounded like an echo of a groan that was surpassing across the air, not unlike the sound of a whale reaching its final call, just as ominvious and as naturally apart of the world and foreboding.

"What about you?" Your head turned as you looked him over. The wind picked up, caressign across Todd's black hair as he turned his eyes over the the sky in that wonder that was both compelling and turned into the backdrop at the same time. He gave a shrug as his crooked teeth closed, and a thought overcame his features as he turned his eyes down in thought.

"I don't know. I came from a similar place as you." He rolled his shoulders as his eyes turned down and reflected across the pool. "I came over because your situation sounded so similar to something I went through, and in the same place, too. I thought I could at least owe it to whatever luck that I had having a place to crash myself instead of the fate of other people I see around here and could at least try to make one person in that kind of scenario feel less alone."

Your eyes turned down, your fingertips tapped across the pool as your lip raised up, meeting across the thoughtfulness in our expression, your expression furrowed in bittersweet thought.

"There's a warmth to him. An eternal warmth. It's complicated, and melancholic, and impossible to describe, and it only exists in this small little world-like a detailed dollhouse only the size of your thumb, but one of the most human and worthwhile captturnings of being alive as human I've ever seen." Your hands traced on the side of the pool, your eyes dim as your hands caressed against the pool.

"Wow. I've never heard of anyone talk about him like that before. Especially on the first date. Whatever fixation that he projected on you, it was clearly for a reason." Todd began to raise himself off of the edge of the deck chair, hands placed in his pockets as he began to adjust his clothes; it was a combination of something casual, the clothes varied and saggy, but with the attempt of being professional; the upper half in the guise of a tuxedo and the lower in lazy crumpled pants. "At least you're both on the same page."

"I just feel it. I stopped questioning or trying to define the things I felt a long time ago and decided to just let them be as they were."

"Makes sense. When you're on the street and just have to take whatever comes to you, you force yourself to just take things as they are. It's the only way to take things as they are, in contras to not taking things as they are, right?"

You laughed, tiredly, but with amusement as your head turned up while you watched Todd walk his way over to the edge of the balcony. The blue illumaiton of the pool, mixed in with the overpass of the hollowing blue light from the cut of the sky make him look feeble but human in that way that was naturally overpowering just from viture of taking him in. Your eyes turned down to your hands as you settled for raising yourself up and off the edge of the pool, the water dripping from your body as you collected yourself and raised your body out of the water. You made your way over to the cluster of what Bojakc left behind to comfort and dry you; and something inside of you felt a special enderance at seeing thathe had left a white robe clumped beside the rest of the rgeular towels, with the initials B.H. traced agaisnt the side of the white robe. Your hips leaned down as your hand reached out and settled under it, lifting it up as you began to rais ethe fabric that was far too big for your body around your shoulders as it dressed across your hips. Your head turned up to where Todd was making hs way to the balcony, hands gripped on his pockets as he eased his body against the balcony.

"Looks like a big storm is coming. Good night for you to be on Bojack's good side that he would even think to take you in."

Your hands gripped on the side of the white robe, feeling the fluff of it meet across your palms as you huddled yourself against the robe and began to walk your way over to where Todd was looking out over to the compelling blue sky that was eased in front of his eyes. You walked your way over to him, head turned up as your eyes focused on the blue light; behind the hue of the thick blue was there the quick passing through of clouds behind it, quick in movement. The sound of the background noise of the graon continued, both foreboding and at ease at the same time.

"Hey-uh-" Todd turned his head to the side as the wind picked up; his voice became more somber, lower in someone who would have more of an emotional intelligence to them than it would seem from the first font. His head turned to you as his eyes lowered down while the wind continued to pick up, and your head turned as you looked him over, more aware than ever of your fragility as your eyes watered across the compact emotion in your eyes while your eyes turned across his body. "I know that it may not seem like a big deal, but I've never seen Bojack be as hospital as this. I mean-a little bit. With ne other woman that I think for the first time in his life, he respected. But not like this. I know he might not seem like much of a catch anyway, but taking in a dirty homeless woman-it's the last thing I would have expected from him. I think it would be really good for him to have someone around who, for whatever reason, he decided is worth it. But, ah-" His eyes kept down, and the wind picked up further, and his black hair became more disheveled as the wind breezed against it, and as your eyes turned across his body and followed his movements and watched his fingers play in his pockets, you noticed the nervousness that was in his action. "I feel a little protective over you. I know I just walked in, but-" He paused, and he rolled his shoulders as he turned to you, and he raised out his hand for you to take; a boyish and simple pout traced on his pale and unshaven features as his eyes gleamed up while his expression met yours. "I'm Todd Chavez, by the way. Sorry it took me so long to get to the name part and not the talk part about my thoughts and emotions."

Your hand reached out and eased across his palm, and you gave a raise of your lip that was an exhausted bittersweet smile as it met on your eyes as you met his expression.

"I don't have a name."

"Whoa. Really?" His eyebrows, messily cut and grey, raised up as eyes buldged. "Wow. that must be crazy for you."

"I've never needed one. Not really. When you have no one to remind you who you are or why it matters, you stop wondering or fighting for even the smallest definition yourself." Your head turned over to the edge of the balcony, and your elbows eased across the metal as your exhausted eyes turned over the buildings. "What I want here is whatever I can get. I have no agenda, though anything I can get that's even the closest thing to peace I will take. I have no motives, no direction-" Your head turned up and over to the expanse of the blue hue in front of you. "Maybe that's how I ended up here, I don't know. But I feel too horrible, and have too many desperate needs to survive now to worry or think about it too much. I'm lucky I can even wake up every day-move, function, be. For years now my entire life has been the opposite of human, and sometimes I wonder that if I was more content with being soulless, more of the kind of person that didn't have an especially in tune connection with their emotions anyway, that I wouldn't notice the lack of humanity turning further in my eyes, the feeling of whatever black force that creates negative thoughts not surrounding me and making me feel like every moment is a battle, a test-maybe one day death." Your head turned over your shoulder as you looked voer to where Bojack was currently hidden behind the bathroom door, and your eyes lowered down in thought, the matted hair being caressed by the wind. "There's something about him that's a good presence for me; impossibly good. I can't explain it. With every component of my life, there's always a certain energy that every person and experience carries with them. I've never felt somehow that grounds me so quickly, that feels like so much home to me, that takes away all of the bad and chaotic thoughts for awhile. I'd like to be able to stay here as much as I"m allowed-to take in the peace and the feeling of humanity he gives me, even if just for a little while."

"But-haven't you just met him? Have you even read the people say about him?"

"And if you were to see the way people see and think about me, I'm sure that you would think the same. But this is something beyond that." Your eyes turned down, your palms squeezing across the balcony as your expressing turned down and gripped across the metal. "I want to experience him exactly as he is in the present, the same way that he's giving me the grace to, and the same way he's trying to know me in the present." Your eyes turned over as you met Todd's worried eyes, his expression wincng as he watched the way your eyes turned up and met his; he looked especially boyish and insuqiutve in the wake of the illuminated light that surrounded his body. "I'm glad that I get that chance. When every day of your life, health and sanity and safety isn't gaunrteed, you learn to start taking what you can, when you can, and whatever it is that he;s given me, even if just for the last couple of hours, I'll take it in full, and I won't question how it makes me feel. I take anything good or any gift given in any way it's granted to me."

Todd's eyes turned down in thought, and his eyebrows furrowed as there was a boyish grimace on his feuatres.

"You know, a little while ago I heard of people who were especially spsitutal-they never survive this world for too long, because connection would be impossible with other people who are more, you know, the video game ad consumer type. And what they saw and felt no one else did-or, at least, they thought that way." Todd's eyes turned up as he met yours. "You ever feel that way, at all? Because altley even outside of my business and projects, it's all I've been able to feel, and it's-strange."

Your eyes seacedh the pout on his face.

"What do yo-"

There was a sudden particular loud groan that cut its way across the sky, met and intertwined by the other echo of it that came from behind that came from the constant thread of the moaning that surorudned the expanse of the area. Your head snapped up as you looked over to where the blue hue was the source of the moaning; across it was there the sudden illumainton of a neon blue light that was implosive as it suggested its light shyly across the clouds, and with a vague peak of itself did it begin to eae its way with an illumination against the grey of the clouds. There was a sudden implosion that came from the blue light, sparks flown in several directions; and then, with a sound of something that was both a soft whisper and a quick whimper from the neon light of the bullet that burst out of it did the ball of ligth begin to burst itself out from the neon illumaiton. It cut through the sky, and through the illuantion of the neon egg as it stretched itself over the sky was there the dakr blue silhouette of what made up a body, your head snapped up as you stepped back, and there were several more than came directly after it, until there were enough that they gave across the suggestion of several small and quick eggs shooting across the hue of the sky, blue bodies curled in into one another as their shells imploded across the expanse of the neon light.

"God. Dude-What is that?" Todd's pale hands gripped on the side of the balcony, his eyes turned over the front of the blue light as they traced across the clouds.

Your eyes snapped back over to where the eggs were still shooting from the illumination of the clouds; though you didn't know anything other than a subconscious feeling, the same way Bojack brought you such innate peace, you were aware of the fact that there were entrie complex inner lives that were being traced and occupied within them, their bodies turned down, all different speices traced in them, vsibible only for a moment, and then gleaned over from the neon light from the dakr hue behind them and beyond the eggs as they turned their bodies through the sky.

"Have you seen this before?" Your head turned over your shoulder and to Todd; he was wincing as his eyes turned over the sky.

"I've been-feeling things lately. Experiencing things. I don't know." Todd's eyes hollowed into a protruded surprise as his eyes turned over the sky, the breeze picking up further while the neon eggs contuiend to shoot across the sky. "That was actually what I was trying to talk to you about. When I frist came in and saw who Bojack was holding, I felt this-emotion come over me. I've been feeling it myself a lot lately; like there's something heavy, in general, more than usual. I'm not usually the kind of person that feels those kind of things, you know, but I have been more aware of something more complex than myself lately; like I;m taking in the world as it is and for what I am outside of myself. I don't know how to explain it-I just know it's something that came on me these past few weeks." His eeys turned up, vaguely trouebeld as his lip pouted while he turned his trouebeld eyes over to where the eggs contuiend to shoot through the clouds through one another. "I don't know. I thought tonight was just supposed to be a storm." He paused as his boyish, unknowing pout turned back to the focus of the balcony. "Sorry for everything I mentioned. You probably have bigger things to worry about."

"No." Todd's eyes turned as he looked back at you. "The way I talk about Bojack, the way I feel him, the specific air and way he carries himself, what I've been saying about feeling like every component and experience of a person has a reach; I don't know how to explain it, either, but I've bene more in turne with things lately. Myself, the overall expose of something larger than myself, an awareness that I didn't know of before of..something."

Todd's worried eyes turned back up to the neon lights. His lip stayed pouted on hs expression.

"If anything I was feeling was true, I'm sure it would have been confirmed by now." Todd's voice was especially exhausted and reflected as his eyes kept up to the lights. "It's already been both bad and good enough, learning that there were a lot of people like me and my worst nightmare of being entirely left behind never came true. But-what I've been feeling, noticning lately-I would never tell Bojack or anyone else this, really, but I felt it when I walked onto the porch. It feels like a warning of something blogger. And this isn't the first time I've seen these kind of things, like something is breaking or trying to communicate something, or-" Todd's eyes turned down in frantic thought, his palms gripping across the balcony as he looked in front of him in his trouble. "It's like a thread is something that was strained for a long time, and it tried to keep itself upright, and for years it did, but now it's starting to break down entirely under the weight of what it's been caring and the cares it's enduring carrying it. Do you feel that, by any chance?"

"Tell Bojack what?"

Todd closed his eyes, and the sound of Bojack letting out his own low grumbles left from the sliding doors of where he had left a moment before. Your head snapped over your shoulder as you watched him stumble out, his eyes winced and fingertips pressed on his expression as he stumbled over his feet and made his way outward, face furrowed in frustration.

"Christ. I did the best I could. I used to use that thing every night until I realized wiping a cloth on my skin is less trouble with the aftermath of cleaning. I forgot how annoying the water not pouring out over the edge could be."

Your eyes turned down as you stepped your way inside, your body leaning against the entrance of the bedroom door as you watched Todd occupy himself with smoothing the sheets across the mattress. Your expression turned to the window that was sat beside the wall, your eyes turning over to where the neon egg lights were illuminating from the front of the black clouds; it was illuminating across Todd's features as he let out his own mumbled hum under his lips. With a pale turn of his hand on the gray crumbled sheets did he left it up, stumbling his way into the mattress while he clamored his way against the crumbled sheets, easing his body back against the pillow. Beside the be table, he reached for the nightgown hat that waited beside his grasp, easing his hand on it while he placed the hat on the top of his head, mumbling to himself with continued contentment as he shouldered his back against the grye pillows.

"It was a weird night." Your statement cut through Todd's mumbling under his breath and the singing of his tone, but his eyes turned up as he met across your body as you made your way inside, hands pressed against your arms as you made your way inside.

"Oh." Todd's eyes turned up as he met on your form as you made your way inward. You felt clouded headed, bewildered and cautious, but you tried to keep the clarity of your purpose on the attempt of talking to Todd as you made your way inside, raising up your lip in a shy smile as you walked your way inward, stopping only a few feet from the end of the bed. He adjusted as he raised his elbows up from where he was leaned against the back of the bed, turning his body up as he looked you over. "I thought you went to the bathroom with Bojack."

"I wanted to talk to you about the scenarios, the feelings you were so worried about lately."

Todd's eyes turned down in thought, and his shoulders readjusted as he gave a small grunt.

"I don't know if worry has been the word I've been feeling lately. More like-just casually experiencing?"

"Tell me about it. Please." Your eyes turned up as you met on Todd's while he winced and met your eyes unceritnly for a moment, his pout increasing as he thought it over, eyebrows furrowing int thought.

"Why? Are you having any experiences?"

"I don't-" You paused, breathing in as your shoulders rolled while you looked down at the floor in thought for a moment; the pattern of the neon blue lights were still crossing quickly across the bedroom ground as you tried to collect your thoughts. "I don't know. It's hard to know, when you're always going back and forth and just trying to make sense of life and live every day." Your eyes turned up as you met on Todd's questioning ones, his eyes naive and wondering as his pupils turned across your body. You stepped forward, your hands gripped across your arms while you kept turned in on yourself. "What you mentioned earlier stuck out to me-something about how you felt the world was turning over, or was heavier lately, with some tension that was heaving in on itself with an energy, in a weird way. Do you remember that?"

Todd's eyes flicked down while his fingertips eased across the crumpled sheets. With the reflection of the shooting lights outside and the pout across his features and the boyish light in his eyes combined with the night hat, he looked especially helpless and innocent and troubled, and there was an emptiness there that made way for an open void of naivety that would lead to an otherworldliness.

"I started feeling it a couple of months ago. Tangibly, I mean. It's this weird heavy feeling-like something is caving in on itself. Kinda like that thing called heartache, I guess, you know? Felt the same way when my mom kicked me out and I suddenly had no identity or anything. I tried to just accept it, at first. It was like this universal worldly feeling of something aching where there used to be this tolerance, except it dosne't just feel like its for me this time. It feels like..something larger than that. A universal grief, or something similair." His eyes lowered as he gave a shrug. "Hard to explain, maybe. Maybe there is no way to explain it." His eyes turned up, temtivaley as his expression turned over to you. "Does that make any sense?"

"I just wanted to hear it from your end of things." Your head turned over to the window beside Todd's bed, and the edge of your lip raised up as you walked your way over to the window. "I felt this aching for a long time, too. It was heavy, demanding; strange."

"Yeah?" Your heard Todd's voice trialing sleepily over through the air, and your eyes turned up over to the expanse of the cloudy hue of the blue surrounding the flashing of the neon lights. "But it's hard to tell those kind of things when it comes to having my life experiencing. The way damage works-it's like going from one swing of something and then over to another. One person hurts you and closes a door, and you try to heal, but you meet another person who closes another door, and then another-and before you know it all you have is your insanity and gripping onto yourself as best as you can. I could feel that ache all the time; the ache that came without love."

"I imagine." Todd's voice was somber as his voice lowered. Your head turned over your shoulder as you looked over at him and saw his exhausted frown that eased across his features while his hands kept gripped on the sheets. "Honestly, just from the fact that Bojakc decided to bring you in in and of itself is something that made me feel like the universe was tidying over, you know? One of the reasons why I decided to come over here on this night and take a day off from my business was just to marvel at it."

You gave a breathed that almost could have come across as humor, your eyes fluttered down as your lip raised up in an exhausted bittersweet fashion. You turned your head over to where his eyes were turned down while he kept his hands gripped on the grey sheets in a pouted frown.

"Did he ever want children?"

Todd's eyes turned up as he met across your watering expression. Downstairs, both of you could hear the tone of Bojack letting out his own swears downstairs from whatever he was attempting to tidy up. Todd's eyes turned to you as his expression flicked down, giving a vague shrug.

"I doubt it. Bojack living significantly for someone else not only seems like something he doesn't want, but also impossible."

You turned your head back up to the window. You closed your eyes as your forehead rested against the mirror, muscles treamoring as your hands kept gripped across your arms.

"I felt it even worse when I came in here, myself. I don't know how to explain it; when I walked in, it felt like something that was aching was turning over in on itself, not unlike what you described, and I could feel myself being drawn into it, whatever it was. And the fact that someone even wanted to take me in, even if just for a little while, and to have the impossibility of good intentions-that's unheard for me in and of itself. When I walked in, I couldn't tell if it was something that was me, or if it was something that he brought out inside of me. I just knew I felt-something."

"You mean-an even bigger ache than sitting dirty on the side of the street and being at the whims of men who just walk by you?"

Your lips treamored, and you felt your tone crack as your body kept firmly eased across the mirror, easing your skin against the window as your face eased against the surface of it, if only just to feel something cool across your skin.

"Hey, thank you for coming in here and reaffirming this, anyway." There was a kindness to Todd's tone as he spoke, and you turned your eyes away from the focus of the height of Bojack's house while you kept your expression turned over the balcony. Your cheek eased across your shoulder as you looked over at Todd while he began to clamor his way out of the tangled bedsheets, his expression boyish and attempting to be helpful as he raised his body off of the mattress, kicking his legs off of the edge of the bed while he clamored his way off. "I was starting to think it was one of those Todd things where I was just making up a lot of shit in my head and didn't know which way was up. I bet that would be something in and of itself that would cause Bojack to throw a fit in and of itself if it were to mention it to him. That's why I wanted to mention it to you."

Your lip raised up, exhausted but in an attempt to be at least somewhat agreeable as you heard Todd make his way off of the bed and over to the window. His eyes enlightened while he looked up and over through the sky i front of him.

"Looks like it's stopping for the night, whatever it is." His eyes winced in concentration as he turned his head up; the peeking out of his black hair from his hat was only adding to his boyishness as he turned his eyes up and over through the window. "That was a big sight, wasn't it?"

"I wish I knew what it was." Your eyes turned back over to the small hint of the passage that made up the two cluster of the black clouds that were making its way through the empty interval. "At least it would make one thing make sense for the night."

Todd's naive enlightenment was kept on the clouds as he looked the over; after a moment of taking in the scenery he spoke; "Maybe, but at least we got to-"

There was an even louder groan, and from it was the sudden surrounding of several lights, all bright and flashing in their blinding demand through shape that was beyond the cluster of the black clouds that was the end pass of where the blue lights had been a moment before. The groaning began to gradually increase to a loud whine of a something that seemed like a melancholic reflection of a create that seemed to echo across the end of the sky, overpassing into a groan that surrounded against the space of the large empty overpass of the cluster of the Los Angeles buildings that were moving across the feet of the sky through the cluster of black clouds and the neon light cracking through the hue of the sky. There was a sudden larger light that emitted from around the line of the rest of the dotted neon blue ones that surrounded across the edge of the clouds, turning over into an increased light as the shell began to ease from the clouds of the sky. The blue light increased, and along with it, the sudden imposition of a paricualr demenaig force from the neon egg of the shell that was eased from the edge of the black clouds. The force of it began to ease into a further implosion until there was a sudden cracked groan that came from the sky; Todd gave an abrupt yell as his feet tripped back, and you felt your own instincts stepping back as your arm flew across your forehead while you stepped over your feet as you snapped yourself back, your eyes easing over to the sky as your expression snapped over it while you watched the implosion of the hue of the blue egg increase. Just as your feet were about to trip backward did your eyes flash across what looked like two small bodies; carefully molded, graceful and precious in the delicate way the hue of the bodies were underneath the neon blue of the egg over them. Your eyes snapped up as you began more aware of the burning under your eyes and the desperate wear on your skin as you snapped your eyes up and over to the shell; a delialte molding of a caring of a tan body, and on the other side of the body, an equally shaped and molded dressed body beside the other form, black and craved into a sophisticated manner while arms and thighs were wrapped across the other body, turning up and over through the sudden bittersweet blue hue of the implosive light that was tracing across the edge of the black clouds Your feet stepped back, head snapped up by your neck as you felt a blinding light ease across your vision as your feet stepped back, the force of the sudden implosion being accompinshed by the crack of the overhang of the sky that surrounded behind the clouds; and with a sudden crack of a white light that forced itself across the egg and then gave an implosion of white light was there a sudden cut through of the edge of the sky, and with that, the cut of an edge of a moan of the white light with an implosion that came across with the force of a sudden cut crack of the groan.

Your body snapped back while you tripped over your feet, the blinding of the shapes of the body blinding across your vision just as the white light began to sweep across your eyes as your body snapped back, vaguely aware of Todd's yell beside you. You tripped over your feet as you felt your body turning back as the breath was knocked out of you while your hands gripped on the back of the bed just as the flash of the white light contuiend to blot against the front of the square window, and you were vaueglya ware of Todd's tone as he let out his own troubled sounds, hands pressed on the tp of his head, eeys comically scurnhced as he kicked his feet while he slammed his body beside the edge of the bed, the first thing your vision saw before the blotted light began to fade form your vision and gave you an inch of sight back.

"Shit! I remember now-the damn alien thing! I thought it was shit I made up! Oh, no!"

"What the hell is going on up here?"

Your head snapped over to where you could hear Bojack's troubled voice easing itself through the hallway, rushing his way upward as he tripped over his feet and slammed his hand on the side of the door as he rushed his way inside, wincing with his ears flown down as he rushed his way inside, breathing shaken and coming out uneven and desperate. His eyes were wincing in tension as his expression turned over to the window, rushing over to it while he grasped his hand by the glass, ears lowered as he snapped his head over to where the light and the two bodies had been blinding, ones of which were now lowering across the blinding light and settling back into the mundanity of the night.

"Bojack! Did you see that?"

Todd's voice came out treamored and deseprate as he raised his body up from the edge of the bed, his own eyes dilated and detached in desperation as he snapped his body upward from the edge of the bed. Bojack's expression was occupied with turning over the window as he gave abrupt and rasped breaths, turning his head up through the front of the glass window as he tried to collect his own panic. His head snapped over to the plastic curtains on either sid, his hands reaching out to the plastic curtains while he gripped his hand on the side of the white strings that were swinging beside the plastic. He gave another abrupt breath as he tripped over his feet, rhythm uneven as he pulled the curtains over, then timidly reached for the other curtain as he began to pull both plastic curtains over the front of the window. He gave another abrupt and rasped breath as he stepped his way back, turning his head forward to the plastic of the small curtains as they covered the window, turning his ears back while his fingertips cramped across his palm while he turned his head forward to what was left in the sky just as your head turned up and managed to catch the last of the blue speckled light that was spotted across the hue of the sky; nothing now except for a tired blue that rested where there had been the expaonse of the blue a moment before. Bojack rolled his shoulders as he turned his head down and gave a breath, clearly trying to settle for recollecting himself as his ears lowered back. His dry and empty eyes turned over to where you body was curled in on itself as he turned over to you, making his way forward, ears lowered, timid and uncertain as he walked his way over to where you were attempting to raise yourself up as much as your shaking hands would allow.

"Are you ok? What the hell happened out there? Did you see anything?"

He gave a grimace as he kneeled himself down in front of you, and your body, as well as the aches and the burns and cuts of it barely managed to settle the disgruntlement in your expression as you tried to raise yoru body up from the ringing in your ears and the excessive disorentination in your expression. Your hand trmebled as you came to ease your palm across your forehead while Bojack's body kneeld in front of you, stomach plush while his body turned down to you in question as his eyes looked over you frantically.

"I saw something." Your tone came out scratched, bewildered as the muscles on your face kept furrowed in bewildered question. Bojack gave another breath as he rolled his shoulders and winced, hands reaching out and timidly wanting to ease across yoru wrist, but his teeth winced while he pulled himself back and watched the pain that eased across your eyes in your disonetieiton that came along with whatever specific way you had been shown a new kind of dressing up or understanding of your existence. "I don't know what it was. It was two people-or horses, they looked like you-it was a strange imagery, it felt so innocent, but it wasn't right; it was terrifying, but strange. I wanted to go to it, but I didn't understand it-" Your eyes snapped up and over to the window, even as Bojack's hands tried to reach out and try to ease across your wrists. Your body raised up as you tried to ease your body upward while your eyes glided across the front window, your expresison turning over the clouds despertalty as your eyes turned up and snapped over to the front of the curtains. Your lip trembled, emotion cracking across your face that, for all the dirt that had been whipped off of it, there was still that same exhausted weak and treamoring features across your features as you tried to raise your body upward-but your legs stumbled as you fell back down, and you gave an abrupt and gruff breath as your body began to slam back down again.

"Here-it's ok." Bojack's voice was trembling, but there was a natural grace he was attempting to be in tune with as his eyes flicked across your expression. "It's just a matter of trying to keep everything regorunded, is all. Who knows what's going on out there, fnaticisal or better or amazing, but right now I just what to get you bathed, and dressed, and put you in bed. A warm, soft, night, for the first time."

You continued to breath heavily, but your eyes turned away from where you were focused on the window, and instead turned down, unfocused and detached as your expression kept down, an inability to see anything in front of you or process as your eyes clouded over in thought,

"I know that this is all happening fast. And there's always some weird shit going on out there. I know." Bojack's voice was treamoring, tender as his eyes eased across your with his own wide and worn worry, palms easing across your cheek as he gazed at you with desepration, palms caressing against your cheek. Your head turned up to meet his wide and expressive begging eyes, and he continued to breath heavily while he kept his palms eased across your cheek. "Can we please go downstairs and try to make this night one good thing, one peaceful night that can happen for you for a little while? Wasn't that the entire point of why you showed up here tonight?"

Your eyes snapped over to Todd on instinct. He managed to ease himself up, turning his body forward as he rocked across his hips while he managed to ease himself upright. His arms rested on his knees as he tried to collect himself, eyebrows furrowing down as he placed a palm on his skin while he tried to recollect himself, turning his hand on his expression while he placed his palm on his forehead.

"I just need to lie down." His voice was somber and exhausted as he began to raise himself up, eyes lowered as he eased himself over to the edge of the bed. His hand reached behind him as he began to grip on the sheets, and Bojack's eyes dimmed as he watched him while Todd raised himself onto the bed, curling his hand back on the gray sheets.

"Todd, what did you see?" Bojack let out a vague whimper as he helped you get yourself up, as much as the weakened part of yourself would allow you too; you were clearly stills detached and uncertain and foggy headed, but you allowed yourself to find some calrity as you let your body become raised up, Bojack's palms easing across your hand as he raised up upward. He grutned as his eyes widned while he felt your hands gripping on his palms while you tried to keep your legs straightened and upright while you turned your body forward, and his expression was bulged and hallowed as he tired his best to keep his hands by your wrists.

"I don't know, Bojack." His voice was somber but his eyes spoke of something more erratic and uncertain as his eyes turned over to the window; he winced as he turned his expression over tot he curtains. "It must have been the climax of whatever was going on with the weather tonight. Or maybe it was something the way you took it? The parade thing you mentioned?"

"Some dumb Los Angeles prank an idiot thought was funny? Yes. I wish I could confidnelty dismiss it as that." His eyes bulged as his eyes turned back down to where his hands were pressed on yours, expression full of fear as his fingertips eased across your hands. "But I know and see that kind of fear that I see on this woman's face anywhere; where it's one thread of negative thought from the other and there's no denying the constant reality of it. I know what ti feels like to feel like the world is going against you no matter what, and how it affects your perception of everything, no matter how much you don't want it to. Believe me." His fingertips were trembling as he kept his hands on yours, and his eeys were protruded and with a tender eternal look of question in his eyes as they buldged through the wear of his worn features. "Look, I know how hard you've had it. It's either feal with the bullshit of other people or have to deal it out on your own, right?" His fingertips squeezed across your palm as he raised your hands up to his chest. "What can I do to help you make this night easier? That was the entire point of why I brought a woman over to my house, when I know that everyone is going to do anything they can every given moment to try and use this against me. But I thought it was worth it tonight. So." His fingertips readjusted across your palms as he watched you pointedly. "What can we do?"

Your head turned to the side, and Bojack's worried eyes followed your expression, your cheek easing beside his palm. You breathed in as you rolled your shoulders, then opened your eyes; exhausted and still red as your cheek rested beside his palm.

"Bathe." You nodded, your eyes still foggy, as if only capable of looking into the eyes of nothing. Your expression turned up as you look at Bojack's expression. "Bathe. What you mentioned. It sounds good."

"Yeah?" His head titled forward as he looked across your eyes, and you gave a vague nod after a moment of thought. Your cheeks were fully red, your expression wet and exhausted as you gave him a nod, though it was shaky, fullof caution. Bojack turned his head over to Todd, who has settled for rapping the sheets further across his body while he looked between the both of you.

"What did you say just now? Something about aliens?"

Todd raised a brow, his eyes darting over to Bojack witha vaguely defensive look across his eyes.

"What, now you care about whatever cray story I come up with because it concerns her?"

"What? No. I just want to clear up what happened. She's talking about baby horses in the sky, you're talking aout some weird alien shit-which for you isn't unusual, but at least now there's a reasonable backup."

Todd's pale hand eased across his expression, and the tension in hsi face gave away how exhausted and disoritned he truly was. He rolled his shoulders as he eased his body down, and Bojack's ears turned back as he watched him turn his body on the mattress.

"It was a conversation we were having. Side effect, probably. I don't know. Probably just one of my misadnetures and schemes, right?"

Bojack closed his eyes, and the true age on his features overcame his face for a moment; showing off how unconventional age had truly made him. His empty eyes turned back to you as ears lowered, and he gave a roll of his shoulders as he turned his focus to where his hand held your wrists.

"Bathe, then?" He turned his focus back to your body, and your eyes turned up as you met his expression, and you gave a small nod.

"Please." Your pale hand gripped across his stocky fingers on your wrists, and his ears perked up a shis worried and vulnerable eyes turned over to where your fingers eased across his palm. His expression dimmed as he felt your fingertips gripping onto him with a new energy this time; of one who wanted to be reminded of something they clung onto, of something good in their lives that they were desperate to keep a griphold on. His eyes turned up to you, and in the new light of the calm of the atmosphere was there an increased understanding between you both; he wanted to give you strength, and, from the deseprate and compelling experience that had pushed that disassociaoted fog over your eyes, you wanted that identity and relief more than anything.

"Those horses; they were small, fragile, declaite. They represented everything I"ve ever wanted, een though I know that someone like me to have that desire is fleeting, disgusting, and even worst; compelley unobtainable."

There was an eeriness to your words, and Bojack's eyes, concerned and made even more graceful from his emotional intelligence, turned across your expression. With one hand keeping on one of your wrists and the other gently coming to lie by the middle of your back, awkwardly, but with attempt of grace did he begin to quietly guide your detached and dissociated sick body over through the grey area of the guest room and over to the door.

"Let's talk about this after we're out of Todd's room. Who knows what he'll come up with otherwise. Whatever it is that you think you two say, it's time to start cleaning all of our headspaces and getting to that soft night of some goddamn peace that was the entire reason why you ended up here to begin with."

His tone was attempting to be casual, if only to break up the thick tension, and even of Todd's somber voice that seemed to have a detached hue to it that spoke of a depth Bojack had never expected from him.

"I feel like I'm grieving something before I've ever lost it. It's such a profound and life changing loss-that every day of my life, for as long as I know it won't be here anymore one day, is more than I can take, and every day leading to the day I won't have that anymore is a daily grievance beyond what I can stand." Your eyes were sickly, fogged, unfocused as Bojack helped you out of the door, your eyes turned down and detached while Bojack helped you out of the door, easing his elbow against ti as he led you out to the hallway. "I wish I could manipulate myself into having a different heart, to not be full of baggage for the woman I could have been."

Bojack chuckled nervously, and his hand rested on the middle of your back as he helped you down the stairs, step by step, down the illumination of the light of the stairs. His eyebrows furrowed in a nervous tension of his expression while his eyes crossed over your body.

"That's a lot for one night. You just spend every night thinking over every possibility and tormenting yourself?"

"Actually, going over every possibility is the only thing that feels good. Makes you feel prepared.'

Bojack's eyes darted across you.

"For what?"

"For whatever happens. In general." Your hand come to cross your chest, and you turned your head up as you met into his questioning eyes as you gave him a raise of your lip, meeting the watered film of your expression that was more reddened as the night went on. "Everything is easier when you prepare yourself."

"Yeah." Guilt crossed into Bojack's eyes, tone clumsy and uncertain as he turned his expression down. "Yeah, I guess that's true."

He turned his head over his shoulder and up the stairs where the sounds of Todd tampering across the bedroom were already beginning to quiet, though as Bojack helped you down the last stair, he could hear the mumbling under his lip trailing from the hallway.

"You got a good place to stay if you're trying to take a break from having to prepare yourself for things, anyway." Bojack's tone was light, but self decrepitating as he followed you across the living room. There was nothing but the neon blue light surrounding the four walls as the melancholy of it reflected across the space. You walked your way off of the last stair, Bojack following, hand ghosting behind the middle part of your back, but he kept some distance as you allowed you to keep walking through the living room. "Nothing has happened around the four walls for years."

Your hands pressed further across your arms as you turned your head down and have a soft breath, something akin to a laugh, but it mostly sounded like the sound of someone exhausted. Bojack's eyes kept down as he followed you over to where the bathroom door was cracked open, the same he had left it, the yellow light easing through the tilted walls as you walked your way inside. Bojack followed, fingertips easing across his wrists as he followed you inside the bathroom, taking yours ielnce as an invitation for a moment to simply enjoy the spanning out of the grounding of your company in walls where there was always only emptiness playing with his psychological state.

You turned over to the tube, your hands coming down to ease across your clothes as your threaded your hands against the see through rags the swan woman had given you. Your hips began to turn as you shouldered the rags over your body, easing them down as they fell to the floor and around your ankles. Bojack winced as he watched you while he kept his hand on the edge of the door while he opened it, making his way inside while he shut the door lightly, ears flicked back as he gave a soft breath, then turned as he began to follow you over to the tub, fingertips settling for playing across his wrists as your body leaned forward and eased across the tube, steam rising from the hot water.

"Do you mind if I get in?"

"Do I mind?" Bojack's voice pippied up, and a cocky but shy smile eassed across his snout as he gave you a nod. "That was the entire reason why I brought you down here, right?"

Your head turned back down to the hot steaming water, and your hips began to ease over the walls while you began to clamor your way into the water. Bojack's eyes flicked down, a frozen smile on his features, awkward and emotionally compact with unceritnity as he made his way beside the tube, easing himself down in front of you while his hand rested on the edge of the tube while the brusited and scratched part of your skin began to ease yourself down into the water.

"I shouldn't get too used to this." Your arms rested behind your body, one hand coming to rest by your thighs, and you gave an abrupt sharp breath of awkwardness in response to the way your body was eased across the water while he tired to move through it. Bojack's ears flicked, his eyes turning over your body as he watched you with eyes that were light and vaguely naive, easing over in question.

"Why?"

"I'll be out there again eventually." Your eyes fluttered down while you focused on the rhythm of your hands easing across your skin while you kept the warm water easing through the cracks of your hands and falling down yoru legs. Though the dirt had started to become less present actress your face, the scratches and the cuts were becoming more prominent. Though a natural pathetic shyness eased across Bojack's features as he watched you move the damage of your bones through the water, he found something inside of his timid air and thudding heart to lean forward and caress his thumb across your cheek. His plush stomach eased across his lap as he leaned his body forward, emotional eyes turning across your body as he felt the warm water fall across your palms while he turned his fingertips across your skin.

"What were you talking about with Todd in there?"

Your eyes turned up as your eyes met on his. You gave a laugh, tired and exhaustedly amused while your eyes fluttered down to the steaming water , where your hand kept sweeping through the steam.

"The weather."

"The weather." His brow raised up, and though neither of you acknowledged the feeling of his thumb under your cheek and the feeling of your skin across his hand, it was an underlayer of a progression between the dynamic of the both of you; you for giving him the ability to offer the small tenderness, and you for taking it. "Very interesting topic to pause an entire bathing session for and going upstairs with, I imagine."

"It was an eccentric night. You have to admit that there's a lot of talk about."

"I actually didn't really understand what the hell any of that was. But-" He gave a shrug, eyes turned up as he rolled his shoulders. "I will admit that it was different, even for the weird people that clutter Los Angeles."

Your head eased down as your lips raised further in your detached amusement.

"I am one of those weird ones." Your hands eased across your knee; it was cut with bruises and splots and yellow marks while your palm threaded across your skin. "Possibly worse. You learn that there's no real rules when it comes to human psychology or any way of being after a certain time."

"I don't think so." Your head turned over to Bojack, who had the smallest raise of a smile across his lip, and it met with a vague glimmer of tenderness in his eyes, softness easing across his features while his expression met onto your questioning, emotional ones. "If that were the case, I think I would have left you out on the street." He tapped his finger on his snout in an attempt to be playful. "I have a good sense for who's worth taking in and who I would be better off without taking in."

Your eyes fluttered down, and an off emotional of remorse eased across your expression, muscles on your face turning down. Bojack's cocky playful teasing lowered into a somber reflection as his eyes turned across your body while your expression turned down, eased across your knee that rested on your chin as your eyes turned downward.

"No matter what anyone says to me, I think the general ida of me not being 'worth' has already been long since cemented into my headspace a long time ago. I'm not even sure if I'm allowed to consider myself a person a majority of the time-and there are more people that would agree than not."

Bojack's pupils turned down, and he closed his eyes as he felt an abrasive wave of regret tumble over him for the dressing up of his words. His eyes were drier, emptier as he turned his expression up to you, then settle for raising himself up as he began to take more initiative, his other arm coming to ease out and rest across your hand while he turned his palm forward. Your eyes turned up as you looked up at him in that heavy and detached way that spoke of countless narratives that he knew was the opposite of his, but there was a depth and surrerality to it in the way it dressed across your features, and any complacent superficiality he felt began to ease under it in the wake of your eyes.

"You don't have to worry about any dumb thing anyone says to try to take your own existence away from you. It's all just a lot of foggy headed and dumb chaotic nonsense that means nothing. I know, because I've spent my entire life having it revolve around these people." His eyes turned down as the muscles on his features tensed, one hand cradling yours, and the other fully open for you to press your hand against at any given moment you wanted. "It's not fun to realize that most people and things on this earth weren't made for you, but there's a clairty that comes with it after a certain point. You have all the empty space in your life to finally realize who you are. No one's talking into your hear about what you're supposed to be."

One of your hands were rested on your other knee, halfway sweeping across your knee with the heat of the water trialing across your hand. Your hand began to ease forward and press on Bojack's palm, and his eyes flicked up as he met on yours as you allowed your other pale hand to find its place in the rest of his other hand, and the weight of your hand in his felt like a reassurance to him; and incessantly lovable.

"You're right. No one is. Not one person."

Bojack's lips raised up as it met into the gentleness of his eyes, timid with a pout across his features as his eyebrows lowered while he looked up at you. As much as there was a melancholy to your words and a worldwide truth for most, if not all people, there was just as much of an invitation, bitter laid with your own experience and your reflection of a life's worth of experience in it.

"Well, for tonight, you have one thing." He gave you a curt nod as he met across your face, and stout fingertips caressed across your hand while his eyes met on yours. "I promise you that. At least for one night."

"Thank you." Your eyes kept on his hands, but you raised your head up as you met on the almost emotionally naive glint of Bojack's eyes as he met on yours, and he gave you a small nod while he met yours eyes. "There was a time in my life where I wasn't defined as anything or thought of myself a anything. I just was. I wish I could take that back. To just be again, with no labels of competition or of what I am or what's deserving. Any cage, really."

"Yeah." Bojack's hands squeezed on your palms. "But."

You nodded. "But that's not the way it is, and I don't have the power to change it."

He paused as his eyes eased across where his hands were placed on the pale of your skin, then took a breath as he rolled his shoulder before he began to ease himself up into a halfway standing position beside the tube.

"Do you want me to help wash you up, keep this sped up, take you to bed?"

You shook your head, but there was something soft, flattered across your expression as you spoke; "Only if it's part of the thing that made you want to take me in tonight."

"No. No. Forget that. I don't know what I'm saying. I just-I wanted to take you in. And I want to help you get bathed and dressed now."

Your eyes turned up to him. "Why?"

"Why? I don't know. Because I want to." His expression tensed in thought as he turned his eyes down to think. "Because for the first time, it feels good. I don't know what. Peace, kindess, good intention, the thought that I can something that feels full for once." He shugged, almost bashful in his worn expression, hand coming to caress against his arm as he looked you over. "I know it won't last. But when I decided to look you over and thought about taking you in, it felt good. Simple. Easy. And I know that's not much compared to the life you've had or anything in general, but."

Your eyes turned up to him fully, and your lip curved up as you gave a small nod. "But."

His eyes turned over to where the delicalte curve of your body was rested across the heated water, cuts and bruises and unhealed skin more proimient than ever. He leaned forward while he placed on hand on a bar of soap, another hand coming to raise a hand in a gesture of calm while he invited the soap over to your skin.

"Can I just try to bathe you through this, at least for a night? Might help with speeding it up so you can feel what it feels like to be on a bed for a little while longer."

"I'm in no rush." Your arm raised forward through the water, and an enlightenment came into Bojack's eyes as a satisifyion came across his expression, and he leaned forward while he eased he soap across the cuts on your arm. "And I won't say no to anything you want to give me."

Bojack cleared his throat, and settled for patting his hand on the tile to communicate his want for him to touch you, and, in an odd way, care for you in the heated tube.

"Come rest by here." His eyes darted up to you as you looked over at him in question, and he winced. "If you're comfortable. It'll be easier for me to care-to wash you."

Your body, sickly and pathetic, began to ease yourself across the heated water and over to the side of the tube. Bojack's ears perked up as there was a light in his eeys while he saw the way you gave him permission for him to care for you as your body eased back across the tube, his hands coming to rest against your shoulders while he began to ease the soap across your skin, the suds of the hot water starting to ease across your skin while he allowed his palms and the watered and running soap to ease across your skin. Your head turned back, and Bojack felt himself give a soft, satisfied small chuckle seeing the way your head eased on the back of the tube.

"There we go. Nice and simple. I'm the kind of guy that manages to make everything complicated, and even I know that when it comes down to the bare needs, it's all pretty straightforward."

Your lip turned up, eyes closed, bittersweet and wretched with someone who was aware at this age that life was a passing strain of work to exist with little promised beyond it, and the wear of how much of a struggle people made that in and of itself.

"I have a fear to be the only one who's existed and has had the amunt of complex inner life and pain built up in my life as much as I have, and yet I also feel like it would be the worst thing to be the only one."

"Yeah?" There was a tender and teasing nourisment in Bojack's tone as he turned his head to the side to get any remaining grim under your chin. Your nck kept firmly back against the rube, the serenity on yoru features coming with great cost, but there was an extra depth to it, and Bojack felt that he not only not needed to hide his mehlcolny, but that it was welcomed. "What else?"

"Nothing." It was spoken as a breath of a word as your body sunk further into the water. "I've seen everything for what it is, and I'm just tired. There's nothing left to do but be one of the countless that has experienced it."

Bojack's eyes lwoered, and he settled for easing his hands under your breasts as his hands curved under your chest; the middle part of your torso felt the heat of the water turn across your skin as he rested his hands under your boobs and then onto your chest, your head turning to the side of the tube as your mouth opened while you leaned your body back against the wall of the tube. Bojack felt the slightest raise of his lip in satisfaction across his snout as his eyes turned over to where he felt your body curve under his palms, your lips opened and eyes closed as your body moved with a light ease and curve under his touch. There was an incessantly mature and exhausted mature feeling to the dynamic between the allure of the both of you; something incredibly tired but rich and material, slow and gentle and homely and incredibly rich. The expression on your features only began to ease into being further smoothed as your head turned back against the tube, back of your body curved against the tube while you felt his palm ease across your skin, your legs kicking as they turned through the water.

"If you're tired, you're in luck." Bojack turned his head over to a folded towel beside him as he grunted and leaned his arm forward to the folded softness of the tan towel, easing his hands against the told of it as his eyes turned down and looked over the warm material, then eased his hands out to your breasts as your eyes turnd up while you felt the towel ease across your skin. Your eyes fluttered up as you felt the material raise across your shoulders, and with a soft breath did Bojack raise himself away from the tube, resting the towel on your shoulders for you to follow.

"You want to get up, dry off, I'll take you to my bed? There's no rush, obviously. You can stay here until wake up if you want, but I'm warning you now, Todd has no shame about letting any given space he occupies that he's occupying it, no matter where he is-so, just a warning."

His hands pressed on his hips as his eyelids lowered in his graceful, worn and exasperated way, plush stomach turning out across his boxers as you began to raise yourself up from the water. Your hands came to rest on the towel on your shoulders as you began to raise yourself up from the water, hot water dripping from your body as your hands enfolded across the towel. One leg gave out just as you were about to take to stepping over the side of the tube, and Bojack's eyes widened as he gave an abrupt breath and rushed his way forward, giving a tense word of his mouth as he snapped his way forward and gripped his hands on your arm. You paused as you trembled, and your head turned down.

"You're trembling." His brow raised, eyes turning over to you, but you shook your head as you gradually raised yourself back up, but not without your palms gripping on his shoulder. "Is it that hard to get around with the way you're feeling?"

Your lips pressed together, and you laughed as your eyebrows treamord. Your hand readjusted on his shoulder as your eyes opened.

"It was beautiful, what I saw out there. Two simple bodies, curling agaisnt one another, young, soft, sweet. I can't get them out of my mind."

Bojack's hands kept on your torso as he helped you step out, though his eyes turned against your body in question as he helped you step out.

"You mean the neon stars?"

You nodded, your hand coming to turn on your face as you pressed the towel across your expression and managed a nod.

"I'm not sure that actually…happened. I know you had a long day. You might be in shock." Bojack's palm came to ease across your back; tenderly, uncertain, his eyes crossed against your body, tentative but well meaning.

"Todd saw it, too."

"I wouldn't say that kid would be the first person I would go to for someone to take confirmation from as to what or what didn't happen." Your eyes met Bojack's as he helped you out of the tube, and he gave a breath as he helped you across the wall of the tube. "But I get it. I get what you're saying. It feels like it did. I know."

"I know what I felt. And you saw the lights, too. What did it feel like for you?"

"For me?" Bojack turned his attention over to the towels beside the wall, easing his hand on them as he gripped hi psalm again as he pulled the towel off of the side of the wall. His hand enfolded against the towel as he took to pressing it around his hip, setting it around his body as he turned to meet your body. "To me it felt like another nonsensical thing that happens around this area. That was what it felt like, more than anything. I wouldn't waste too much of my time thinking or worrying about it."

"But you've never seen anything like it?"

"Have I seen anything like the neon lights raising across a blue hue like that and whatever other narrative Todd attached to it-no, I'll admit I haven't." He lifted up a finger as he made his way over to where your body was being enfodled acros the sheet around your torso; or at least, you were attempting it. The towel kept falling from wher eyou were attempting to have it folded around you body in a dignified way, the material falling down from your skin even as you continuously kept trying o catch it rom the messiness of how you tried to keep it across your body, and there was the occasional wincing across your expression at feeling it touch your skin. "When you live up here long enough and take in whoever breaks up the muddled thoughts for a while, you stop worrying about things like that. Or trying to make sense of them, or wasting any time trying to make any sense of clairty in your mind about what people around here dream up to keep themselves entertained from their usual dinners and movie sets. Here." His hands come to rest on where the towel was beingining to fall out of the grasp of your hand again. His stout body came behind you as he wrapped his brawny plush arms around your wasit, and you stepped back as you allowed his palms to ease across your body while he pulled the towel up and around your breasts.

"Just, uh-let me adjust it so it's just right. You don't want to walk around this house with those naive bug eyes of Todd following around, trust me."

Your body went limp as you let the foreign feeling of Bojack keeping himself concerned with your body occupy yourself, and Bojack let out his soft mumbles and breaths, all of them homely and tender as much as those soft and irreparable lost eyes, as he began to tighten the towel across your chest until it fully rested across your skin.

"Just a little tightness of the towel across your breasts, keep the material nice and tonight around your skin, pull it and fold it around the corners-" Bojack's hand pattered across the towel on your back as he foled the edges inside one another, and with that did his arms begin to loosen from your body as he felt the tightness on it.

"Look at that." Your head turned down, turning over the towel as you stepped around in a circle, then settled for turning your eyes up to Bojack. He placed a hand on his hip, back hand encircled against his hips as he swpt his hand in front of him in a gesture, that casual cocky teasing back as he looked you over.

"You see? You're great. It's not so bad once you get the hang of things. And I narrated what I was doing more than I knew I was, so-you know." He gave a small shrug. Your eyes turned down as you looked down at the tightness of the towel that was now wrapped around you like a tube, and your eyes turned up as you met his eyes, nervous but well meaning, and you stepped forward as you made your way to only a few inches away from where he stood in front of you, eyes turning across your body in his attempt to be confident and leading.

"Oh." Bojack chuckled as he stepped back, ears turning back while he watched your step forward further, and though there was an avoidance that glinted in his eyes, there was a depth of something more desiring as his eyes turned over your body; as practical and as in control as he was trying to come across, there was just as much something that was full of a deeper hollowing need, something spiritual and indescribable and unhinged that was moving along with him in the graceful, heavy and isolated glint of his eyes. "I'm sorry, do you know where the bedroom is?" His head turned over his shoulder as he began to step over to the cracked bathroom door. His eyes dimmed as he looked over at you. " You want me to take you?"

"Whatever you'll do. I don't care."

"Ok." Bojack nodded as he gave a breath, one that spoke that he was trying to reset the mugginess of his mind. He made his way over to the door as he opened it, turning over to you to lead you out; his hand came to reach out over to you in the same way he had led you, and just as there had been before was there an odd romantic grace to the action. Your walked your way forward to where he had his hand eased on the door as your hands kept placed on the towel Bojack had folded across your torso well enough, and as Bojack led you back out into the melancholic living room with the blue neon pool dressed around the walls, the previous quick spotted neon lights of the eggs now gone entirely from specking and polluting the space into that bittersweet and chaotic surrerality that had passed by the hue of the light of the grey walls. Bojack seemed to be becoming increasingly more agitated as his air became more clumsily while he tripped over his feet and over the living room, your eyes following while the both of you began to make your way over to the grey stairs, though Bojack's pace seemed to sped up notably as he helped you with his hand on your back, not pushing you, but ceritnly rushed himself.

"Goddammit-" His feet stumbled against themselves as he rushed his way over to the stairs, turning his head over his shoulder as if to check to make sure you were following. You caught a glimpse of the sopfhitcation and grace that was present on his features as he turned his head over his shoulder to make a point to see if you were following. His eyes were in that tender and timid way while his breath hitched and, in the reflection of the neon pool that flooded through the four walls, you could see the squint of his eyes and the poke of his teeth through the worry that broke out on his worn face.

"Are you ok?" Your voice was low, though you knew there was no logic to it; the house was big enough that you knew the likeness of waking Todd up and agitating Bojack was next to none.

"I'm fine. Promise. I just want to get you to bed before the sun wakes up-and there's no point in us staying here in this room after what happened so soon, right? We don't need to worry about any more of those visions or weird shit polluting up either of our headspaces if we can help it."

He chuckled as the muscles on his features tensed in a nervous timidness as he walked over the stairs and, after a moment of reaching his hand out and with his stout fingertps against his palm while he clumsily tripped over the stairs, lip raised up as it met across the insistence of his eyes while his expression turned over your body. Your eyes gave permission, and the tension in Bojack's body vibsily eased down as he reached out his hand and placed it across the middle part of your back, helping you up the stairs even as he gave his own occasional rasps and clumsily remarks frm his lip.

"My bedroom is across from Todd's. Just enough room to make sure that if anything does end up emerging into his head in the middle of the night that would warrant waking you up in the middle of the night."

You tried to allow your body, as scratched and cut as it was, to continue following Bojack through the moonlight reflected hallway without any genuine resistance. But you remembered how much his timid, almost naturally fatherly reaction and protection had come over him walking across the living room, and the panic and vague emotional torment that had glimmered into his expression-how much his instinct seemed to have been bent on protecting you.

"How did those lights make you feel?"

Bojack's ears flicked, and there was an unreadable emotion in his eyes as a hard flash eased across his expression. But he flashed you a nervous grin as he helped you down the hallway, the back of his hand still ghosting across the middle of your back as he helped you down the four walls.

"I think it was quite a show for a night that didn't need to be any more ambitious than it already was. Riled up the two people I have in here that I barely know anything about enough as it is."

"But how did it make you feel? The colors, the way they shot. You must have thought something."

"I thought-well. I thought mainly about how it was unusual to see people put that much effort into something like that. Usually people just put up some fireworks and call it a hit and run for the night."

He was chuckling nervously, his voice deep and his throat rasped and nervous as he helped you across the hallway. Your feet side stepped as you tried to keep the weakness of your body as firmly supported as you walked through the hallway, your hands gripping across the towel.

"I do think the, uhm-child thing you mentioned was-cute. Imaginative." Bojack cleared his throat as he turned and looked a you with a softness of his eyes, giving you a raise of a small encouragement of his lip as he looked you over. Your head turned as you looked over at him and gave him a small nod to the attempt at kindness he was attempting to give you, even with the clear strain that it put on here to execute it as such; an awkwardness came from the execution. Your eyes turned to his as you raied your lip up and have a small laugh, readjusting your hand on the towel as you continued to walk your way down the hall.

"Do you think it really happened, though?" You head turned up and looked over at him in question. The awkwardness on Bojack's eyes were ones of a sudden flittered hesitance as a foggy emotion eased across his eyes while he eased his arm forward to the far larger doors that were across the other bedroom; the master space of it widening up as awkwardness became something that was even more cautious and hidden and conflicted as he helped you forward through them.

"Do I think that there were two horse girls in a neon egg being hurled through the sky?" He tapped his tongue on the roof of his mouth, and though there was a dryness to his tone, there was an edge of forgiveness to the way he spoke. "No. No, not especially. I think I would need quite a lot more beers to get through my system before I started believing in things like that."

Your eyes turned down, feminine and uncertain and sweet and meeting across the firm blush of your cheeks as you began to walk your way through the large grey entrance that lead to Bojack's bed. Your eyes turned up as you kept your pale and sickly hands firmly gripped onto the towel while you walked inward, eyes turning up to the grey sheets. The bedroom was well made and had an odd stoic melancholic maturity to it; there was no clutter that was littering the ground, the grye sheets folded kindly and neatly across the mattress, the pillows made and gently patted on the other side of the mattress. The only signs of anything jenville or messy that would reflect the drunk lifestyle of Bojack's way of being that he was known for was a mostly empty whiskey bottle that sat beside the large curved grey bowl that was beside it full of stones, the light reflected against it from the neon pool that left some residue from downstairs despite being a little way away.

Bojack was giving soft tender breaths and a clearing of his throat that suggested conflict as he made his way inside, and your head turned as you watched him form your detached exhausted and fogged eyes as he began to trip his way forward and over to the mattress. He leaned down beside the edge of the bed while he placed his hands on the top of the bed, muttering under his lip in a graceful but clumsy and emotionally awkward fashion, ears lowered halfway back, and suggesting someone who was especially timid and full of his natural apology as he made his way across the emptiness of the area, nervousness lacing his movements.

"Sorry if I seemed a little-off down there." His head turned up to you as he curled a hand by his hip, the emotionally intimacy that filled the room and the lack of experience that he seemed to have responding to it still causing his stout body to not know what to do with himself. He winced as he turned his emotive and uncertain eyes to the bed. "It's just-sometimes you want weird shit to stay happening and just get to bed. You know?"

"I get it. It was a long day. And a lot of things that I'm sure you're not used to."

Bojack's eyelids lowered as he gave a small shrug, eyes turning down as his ears eased back, a small sense of shame on his face as he looked down to the mattress.

"I don't know. Taking in woman and keeping Todd around as a buffer to make sure that there's some padding to whatever chaos ensues from that is something that isn't entirely erased from my past."

"Is it not?"

Bojack chuckled, though it was a sound meant to break up the tension more than anything else, his head to the side and over the mattress; there was an emotional awkwardness and distance to the way he was turning his head away, despite his voice trying to feign confidence. You tried to step your way forward and into the bedroom as much as you were able, though your body felt especially weak, given the usual unhealthy lifestyle it harbored and the disorientation that you felt from the long day, both emotionally and physically, of the day that you had had, more than enough to process than you could process.

"I'd like to hear some stories sometime. If you'd like to sh-"

Your leg abruptly gave out; a jolt of anxiety went through your body as you felt your body stumble forward while you felt the ache in your leg that didn't seem completely unrelated to the general fog in your headspace caused your eyes to widen as you gave an abrupt gasp, your feet turning forward as you felt your body brace for slamming onto the gound.

"Oh, god, no-"

Bojack's voice was low and clumsy, but there was an energy of well intentioned desperation as he tripped over his own feet to race over to you as he stopped in front of you and had his arms abruptly flash out to catch your body as it fell forward. Your breath shook, head turned forward as the towel that had been clumsily woven against your body but well enough began to unravel in the sudden jolt of your body tripping over to the floor. YOu felt the soft catch of Bojack's palms grip against your arms as your body abruptly froze while his body just barely managed to catch you, and his muscles tensed while his teeth showed in grimaced as his eyes looked over you harrowingly, hands embracing against your arms as he began to help you up with a low grunt.

"I'm sorry." Your voice shook, head turnd forward as you gave a dry gasp of your throat while trying to keep yourself upright, your other hand coming to grip on Bojack's palm as he grunted and allowed you to use him to get yourself back into a striagthening position.

"Don't be. It would be weird if this didn't turn out to be a thing, what with where I found you and the nonsense you've put up with coming around here tonight." Bojack gave a grunt as his hand slid across the middle part of your back, with a slight detachment of his hand easing his grasp away from your body, though the concern of his eyes did't leave focusing on your face.

"You're kind." The words came out shaky, almost like an afterthought of a hiccup as your hands tried to find the safety of the towel to pull back on your torso again, but it had fallen down to your ankles. Your head turned down as you gave a soft swear, turning your eyes down as one foot raised up. Bojack's eyes turned down as he shook his head abruptly and placed his hand by the bare of your back.

"Don't worry about all of that. You did enough for tonight."

"You don't mind?" Your head turnd up to his face ad Bojack helped you over to the bedside. His pupils turned down in thought.

"Minding isn't the issue. I think self control would be more of the term for it." He chuckled agan, timidly, awkwardly, bottom eyelids wincing as he met yours, tender and almost animalistic and pure in comparison. "Am I right?"

The joke slid by the helplessness of your face, but you turned your head down with a slight soothing humor easing across your expression as you made your way over to the mattress.

"As long as it's comfortable for either of us. I think it's a gift just for whatever makes up the world to give the gift of even just one person that's made for us, emtoionally, to be on the same wavelength even for just a while. I know it's the least promised thing on earth, and yet it's the only thing that keeps us human."

"I have also found that." You were aware of Bojack's palm and the nervous air it had as his hand followed the middle part of your back while he guided you to the mattress. He turned beside you as he leaned forward and easd his hand on the grey sheet, pulling it back as his eyes turned against you tentatively, his eyes turning over you with a clumsy and endearing curisotry as he stepped his way back. Your body, pale and awkward looking as it was began tos ettle over to the mattress, your legs curling into it as you eased your body against the surface. Bojack's fingertips played for a moment as he stepped back and watched your body curl onto the mattress. When your head turnd up to look at him, part on instinct, part in curisotry of whatever emotional cradling was happening between the both of you to figure out what to do next, he gave a slight breath and a tender sound of his uncertainty.

"Uh-Right. Just-pull it up. Nice and easy over your legs."

It was clear that there was a vague edge of fear of endowment on his features as he stepped his way to the edge of the mattress, his hand coming over to the grey sheet as he began to pull it over your body; tentatively, as if he was afraid of hurting you in a way that spoke that he saw you as especially fragile.

"Don't hold back. Please. Get yourself comfortable." Bojack's hands came away from the edge of the grey sheet as you turned your head up to meet his eyes, your body leaning against the pillow as you raised your lips to watch him with a small nod. "I didn't go through all of this for you to be precious about how you get yourself around this area."

Your hand came to rest in front of the grey sheet tht was lain in front of you, pulling it over to your chest as your hands gripped across your breasts.

"Did all the other woman here do the same."

A dryness overcame Bojack's expression that spoke he had long since gotten used to the stagance of the unremarkability of his past, his eyes turning over to you as he looked over at you with a dry flair.

"You wouldn't believe how much they rolled themselves all over this place and made it home." He turned his head over to the grey sheet and kept it wrapped around your body, ears lowered back as his palms pattered around your body with soft and hesitant action, and then with an abrupt breath he began to rasie his body up while he looked you over. "You couldn't outdo anyone here even if you tried, so please, just make this worth something for all of us."

Your eyes turned down, thoughtful and reflective a sit met the pale of your cheeks. His eyes turned over yor physical disposition as he took you in, ears lowered as there was a melancholic pout across his features; and under that, somethat that was a fragile appreciation.

"I never would have noticed it with the way I found you, but your skin glows more than anyone I"ve ever seen."

Your eyes turned up and met on his, eyes gleamed and distant, and it wasn't until your eyes met his that he noticed just how red they were around the edges; it added to the emotion in your eyes that spoke of an exhaustion and a need for survival he knew he would never experience in his lifetime, and for a subconscious moment did he wonder if he would ever know it.

He cleared his throat, a vague scratch to the action, his bottom eyes lowered as he looked you over. "In the moonlight, in the reflection of my dumb pool, in the hue of it, I mean."

An emotion came across your face as the tension in your expression fell; and in it was it replaced by something that was curious, tragic, empty emotive. Your bottom lip pressed against your top one, pulling into a tension, and he took in how your face seemed like the impossibility of being both worn by age and worry, a naturally unattractive thing to people by default such as people were naturally repulsed by; Bojack had come to know that himself by the virtue of how he led himself trough his life, and he felt his own reaction to the way you looked him over.

"You don't have to worry about anything tonight." His plush body began to lean forward as he kneeled down beside the mattress, his hands coming tentatively beside you as he looked you over with his ears flicked back as his eyes turned across your own searching and tender expression across his body. "I know that's not much in the overall scope of things, but-" That same timid undereye wince again. "It's something, right?"

Your expression came just as pale, fragile and wondering as your eyes turned over Bojack, the emotion on your features adding onto the allure of your indefinable attraction, and your pale hand, the stress of the veins in your hand protruded, turnined as you looked him over, distant and sickly; but there was a purity there that had everything as a whole feel far less iinimating , both inward and outside of himself, than it had ever been.

"Get some sleep. At the very least." His eyes turned down in thought as his hand reached out to your chin; your hair was still matted into tangles despite the attempt he had given to trying to get it both clean and straight, and he gave an abrupt breath as he turned his thumb under your chin while he began to pull the matted hair away from your skin, worried eyes turning across your face as he looked you over. Your cheek began to rest across his palm, and there was a new transaction level of trust put there, and something gleamed further in your eyes as you met his.

Your eyes turned over to where his plush body was leaning beside the bed, and your eyes turned over his form you looked over the form of his plush body. Your back began to raise up further as you pushed yourself into a further upright position, until your hand began to detach from his palm and began to slide down the chubbiness of his brawny arm, yoru palms caressing and holding against the curve of his chubby arm as your palms grazed across it.

"Oh-" Bojack's ears flicked up abruptly, and he winced as he looked you over as he felt your hand began to ease across his arm and over to his torso. His eyes turned over to you while an alarm of insecurity came across his eyes as his ears perked up, his expression flashing uo to you while he began to ease his body away from your touch. "Woman, no." His hand came to rest by the slender wandering of your hand just as it was about to rest by his torso; he paused as a vague regret glinted in his eyes as he looked you over. "I'm sorry, what would you like me to call you to avoid future-" He paused as his eyes turned up, clumsily, shyly, endearingly. "-Inconvenient politeness?"

"You can call me anything you'd like." Your eyes turned up to meet his, the reflection from the outside neon light easgin across your features, adding onto the eternal look of your eyes.

"Ok-well-" Bojack's focus turned down to the pale of your hand as, with a grip of his palm on yours while he gradually began to turn your hand down and away from where you were tyring to put yoru hands on the more intimate part of his body did he turn your hand away, easing it back beside you. His eyes turned up to you, hesitnatley and with a cloudiness as his eyes met yours. "How about Erika? Short, sweet, simple. To the point. And, like you, something common, like a woman, that I've heard the general concept of being thrown away countless times in the past-but the real thing has only been experienced once."

There was a clear conflict and a ttumbling over your eyes as you met across Bojack's features, and his attempt at being confident and casual was hidden under another guise of his hestience as he felt an insecurity come over him as he looked you over.

"You can call me whatever you'd like. I've been nothing, no one, for so long now in my life that I've had to create entire realities around my life to get where I am now. I've heard every type of phsliopshy of every kind of human misery, failure, joy, wisdedom, good and bad that's even been had in life; but I've never once felt like any of it was something I was experiencing specifically." Your body turned further over the side of the edge of the mattress, and though Bojack's hand was attempted to keep a resistance against your palm, the natural apology that was eased across his features began to lessen into acceptance as his teeth poked while he gave a timid breath, though the tension in his body began to lessen as he felt the way your hand reached forward and grazed across his white shirt.

"Please don't." His voice was edged, but more than anything, he sounded like someone afraid, panicked, vulnerable as your hand came to ease forward to his shirt, glowing pale and reflecting against the moonlight that was rising from the window outside.

"I don't have any standard. I wouldn't know the kind of cages people put themselves in, whether good or bad, even if I tried."

Bojack gave another abrupt breath as a desperation eased into his eyes that came along with something almost boyish in his pain, but slowly did the resistance of his hand on yours begin to release as he allowed your hand to find its way down the curve of his stomach, and over to the edge of where his stomach eased into an overhand against his pants as your hands began to guide across his shirt.

"You do this all the time, don't you?" Your eyes turned up as you met across his, and a silence of something that seemed ominous and a sign of something too profound to be understood began to ease further across the energy that was in the bedroom. Bojack's eyes lwoered down, emotion vulnerable as his thighs began to lower down onto the ground as he felt your other hand come to raise up on his shirt, and with a soft breath did he feel your hands begin to raise up around the plush of the curve of his sotmatch and the stout nature of his body as it became revealed through you lifting the shirt up from his shoulders.

"Not in a way that ever mattered." His head shook lightly, ears perked up as his black mane became more splayed out erractially while he felt the shirt pulled over his head, turning his eyes as he looked you over while he felt the shirt coming to raise over his hand. Your eyes turned down as you looked over the crumple of the white shirt, then gently did you come to rest it beside where Bojack was kneeling in front of you.

Your eyes turned against him as a glint of surprise came across your eyes; and, with the soft gradual sense of confidence that came from someone who was experiencing the natural strength of an emotional connection, was there a vauge sense of fire in your eyes as you gave a slight raise of your brow.

"No?"

"I could always feel it. It was always dumb shit, or kind tolerance for the sake of escaing the suffering that comes with complete isolation. I could never figure out the exact reason why. I just always knew that ther were a lot of unacknowledged things that were making the experience unclear on the surface that were never answered underneath them."

"And this?" Your body was now further on the edge of the mattress, and your hands came to cradle across the curve of his stomach as you looked him over; he felt a natural tension at the way your hands were touching the curve of his plush stomach, curving out from the soft pinch of the lovehandle that sat under the upper part of his breast as he felt your hands cradled across the bloat of where a vast majority of his insecurity lied. His eyes lowered as they became more vulnerable while his eyes eased across your expression, and he gave a breath as he rolled his shoulders and turned his eyes down, empty and stoic in that mature way that could only exist for someone that truly suffered.

""I'm terrified." His tone cracked on the last word, and the handsome emotional akward naivety that was in contrast with his life experience turned over your eyes as his expression eased across yours. "That's all."

His sout body leaned forward into the touch that your palms cradling the extension of his insecurity carried. His eyes turned up as the light contuiend to ease across both of your features, though with the way that it reflected in your eyes, there was a certain shaprned enlightenment that came from the amount of emotive depth of your features and the layer sin them that, like most, were not far from ever been known or had ever existed at all outside of the maddening headspace that made up the majority of minds.

"That's ok." One of your palms that was cradling beside his stomach began to ease forward and thread across the edge of his snout, your fingertip turning under his lip, the same way he had done with you a moment before; it felt like a mirror of peace. Your eyes were softened while gudided across hs expression as you kept your fingertips easing under his snout, and he felt his own worn ace subincioulsy leaning across your fingertips as your eyes eased across his into something unreadable; but he felt himself, even with his endowed loathing and unremakabiltiy and a lifetime from himself and others that there was an otherwise truth than to what was happening now did he begin to follow your hands while he allowed himself to raise up from beside the bed, his hands easing against your wrists as he allowed his thighs to leaned by the mattress. He bent himself forward and leaned over you uncerintly, gently as he looked you over while your body eased back onto the mattress, and his hands, timid and awkward came to rest beside your shoulders as he turned his body over your thighs.

"I don't want to do anything tonight." That same boyish wince came over his expression as his plush body rested over your form as your torso leaned back, your matted hair laned back and entangled around the pillow. His eyes turned over you as his plush thighs rested beside your waist, clearing his throat as he eased his thighs around your body; in an odd way, from the amount of emotional intimidation he felt the profundity of the room, was there a truth of some essence that came along with a challenge of something so rea that it challenged everything around him, and he was almost grateful for the fact that there was a least a little bit of space between him and the intense feeling that there was a gray sheet between your thighs and his body for the time being. He cleared his throat as he hesitantly spoke; "Tonight. It's just a lot, and you don't look like you would be ready for that kind of..thing."

Your lip raised up into something that that was reminiscent of a tired and detached smile as your eyes turned over his body. Your hands came up and eased across his arm, and with a tender breath did he allow his body to ease across your breasts; the curve of his stomach rested with a small ease across your torso, and though he felt almost piggish in his indulgence with how much he wanted to enjoy and feed himself into you and the energy of the incessant warmth of identity and grounding where there had only been empty waste, it felt as if it was the least the both of you deserve as he looked into your emotionally compact eyes that held stories never told to anyone; borderlining on nonexistence, and himself for his own overly familiar extent with himself.

"Tell me a story about beig around here." Your voice was soft, exhausted, and scratched; far from perfect, and yet it was the authentic flawed mode of how you spoke that caused something in Bojack to feel something akin to a hock of an ease of something real.

"There's not much to tell that you couldn't make up from any cliche that comes along with an asshole siting in his house."

"I don't think so." Bojack's plush body rested further across your torso, your breasts coming to rest across his body as he eased his weight onto yours, and hesitnalty did his snout come to ease across the curves of your face; he found his snout starting to rest across yours. "Someone who fits into that mode dosen't sound the way you do."

"Which is-" His eyes turned up to you, tentatively, shy question inhabiting them. "What?"

"I felt it the moment I heard it." Your body readjusted, eyes turned up to the ceiling. "A story-an endearing, challenging, humble and impossibly rich and lovable story. Layered, and the most human I"v ever known. Every tone. Every word." Your hand came to grae aross his mane, already splayed out in multiple directions as your hand came to guide across the coarse hair that built up behind his beck as your palm grazed across the fine coarse hair through the long natural grace of his neck. "I don't know how to explain it entirely. I don't need to. I only feel it."

"I think you might be speaking in terms of someone who hasn't had someone to talk to who isn't trying to use you for a quick getaway sex escape." His head turned up from where his snout had come to raise up from your features, and his eyes snapped across your face as his arms began to ease into an embrace across your skin. "No offense."

"Tell me a story. Please." Your hands rested beside the back of his head, and Bojack's eyes turned down as his expression flitterd in thought, muscles on his face contending in thought, then contracting.

"I want to hear something from you." His eyes turned backnup with a new resolve. Your eyes blinked for a moment, slowly, as you met across his insistence, his mouth curved up into a small grin as much as he could manage. "I only get you for a few nights. You're the one with the imagination." His chubby hand came to gently glide across the side of your cheek, this time for the sake of it; and this time without any excuse except for the obvious need that the both of you felt the need to for the sake of it. "Tell me more aout the girls you saw. Anything about them at all."

"The girls?" Your head turned over to Bojack in surprise, and he gave a soft nod of his expression while his eyes turend over you, as soft and as irrepabale as the tone of his voice. Your shoulders readjsuted as you put an even more intense focus on his eyes. 'I'm surprised you would want to hear about them at all. You don't seem like-" Your eyes turne down to where your hands had found themselves rested by his large amrs. "-From what I hard and read now and then, anyway, the kind of man who seemed into that."

Bojack's eyes lowered into a sleepy content calm, and the chill of the grace of his raspy voice that naturally carried his emotionally intelligence turned the conversation forward as he leaned his snout against yoru features.

"Tonight, I am. Tonight I can be that."

"You're sure?"

"Yeah." His lip turned up, timid, boyish, helpful, kind. Simple. There was something wretching about it in and of itself. "For you. For this night." His round shoulders pulled further to your body as he eased his body against your torso into anincreased welcoming bundle. "It's just a story. No harm can be done by a story." His teeth showed as his eyes turned down, conflict and an emotional akawanrdess in his expreesion as he laughed lightly before turning his eyes back to you with that same awkward tenderness."Maybe even for me."

Your eyes turned down thoughtfully, and there was a soft reflection across your expression that gave away something similar to a soft consideration that eased itself across your face. It added onto the odd motherly allure that you had about your air; even just being around it gave Bojak a sense of grounding that he previously didn't even find possible, and a clarity was coming to his mind that he had found impossible to find. For all the advice he had ever been given that he was meant to find peace in himself in order to avoid suffering, he had never been able to find the dynamic; but with his brawny and chubby hands eased across your palms, and with the slender welcome of your hands pressed across his hand while he looked up at you with a hue of question and desperation, there was an increased understanding of what it meant for a peace to come from what was around him, rather than distraction.

"They were curved in a strange way. One of them-a beautiful black midnight skin, and the way her snout was curved and carved was like nothing else. The slender wave of her wavy hair, the way she was curled herself with a certain kind of sophistication. The beauty of her; it was niche, unseen, but the way it left a mark on me just for those few moments was remarkable. Not unlike-"

You cut yourself off, and your eyes turned up as you looked up to Bojack; he gave a small raise of his lip, eyes glimmering softly as his eyes eased across yours in a soft enocurgament to continue.

. "It was the way you made me feel. And not just because you were someone who suggested to take me home."
"Oh." Bojack's snout titled back, genuine surprise guided across his face s his expression darted across his eyes as he looked you over, fingertips squeezing across your palms while his eyes looked across you with surprise easing in his expression. His voice pipped up, in a slightly boyish fashion, as the simple question leaned out; "I did that?"

"It was a in a way that only you managed to be able to give me. I've never felt it with anyone else before; not in the way you gave it to me. For a moment, the inevitable human suffering I was going through lessensed for a little while, and I found a little bit of clarity."

"It's funny. I could say something similar about right now." Bojack cleared his throat as his eyes turned across yours, ears lowered, air and expression tragic and timid. His sotut fingertips squeezed across your palm as he gave you a vague nod. "And the other one?"

Your lip raised up as the red of your cheeks began to become a deeper hue across your skin, eyes lowered down as yoru fingertips gripped across his skin for a moment of thought. The light across your face gave a reflection of someone who was especially profound in the specific emotion of something eternal that came along with the spefirc way he was that intertwined so compellingly with the specfiifc way you were, and his hands squeezed across yours for you to continue.

"Soft, tan. Delicate. Wonderful. Light and birgth eyed and full of life." A detachment came across your feuatres as the light in your eyes raised for a moment at the description of them, and then another hitch of your breath as the muscles on your face began to lower with the thought of them. "It filled me with so much life that on the other hand, it also reminds me that no matter who anyone is, we're all robbed from the one thing we need to be able to live; to be and feel human."

"What, a little bit of lights in the sky did all that?" Bojack chuckled as his eyes turned across yours while he tried to keep a detached teasing across his expression, but the genuine look of melancholy eased further on your features.

"Love. The hardest thing to get and keep in the world, and the constant mental and emotional accompaniment that comes along with the constant loss and change of it. Your head titled tot he side as your fingers squeezed against his, but only for a moment, and it seemed like a subcicnious decision. "The absence of it that makes every day feel likt it's this impossible and constant war with veyr little to any releif; the kind of thing that grades any person down over a period of time, and the one thing that's the least accessed and the most imposisbly understood. To survive without it is to only numb it, and sometimes not even then."

"So-how did you do it, all this time, then?" Bojack's expression was naturally timid, lost, his eyes wet with a melancholic and boyish softness as his eyes turned up to your expression. "If all that's true, how did you make it all these years until I found you on the side of the street?"

"Delusion." Your head turned down over to where your fingertips were threaded beside his palms, your eyes eased down onto his palms as your fingers encased against his embrace, then contracted again. "Or maybe a better word for it is some deep, indescribable hope of something I dug deep inside of me for the sake of something not completely unlike insanity in order to be able to keep my head upright as much as I was able to." Your hands began to slide out of Bojack's palms, and your shoulders eased down as you kept your eyes turned down to his hands. "And a lot of alcohol."

"Yeah." Bojack laughed, quietly and detached as he turned his eyes down to where his hands were eased across the mattress, his hands encircled against the sheets that surrounded his palms. "I get it."

Your head turned to the side as your chin rested beside the pale of your shoulder, and slowly did your head turrn back over to the window as you looked over the vast hue that made up where the dark blue had been a moment before; there was still some hues of the blue suggested by it as the expanse of where the blue lights had been gradually began to fade from the sky beyond even a whisper of their presence. Bojack's bottom eyelids winced, his ears lowered back as he looked across your expression, and he took a breath ss he tried to restart his focus on where he wanted the conversation to lead; for once, rather than foggy headedness and emptiness and the chaos of his headspace was there something new that he was still trying to understand and interact with; the strain that came along with having something in front of him that was a line of something that almost seemed worthy of intention.

"So-the girls. Are they the kind I would see on the side of the street at the stripper club, or more of the old fashioned fluffy dress trendy types?"

Your eyes were fogged and distant, but at Bojack's words was there a clarity that came across your expression. You blinked quickly as your eyes turned over to him, expression easing over his as your eyes met onto his own. Your lip raised up, expression meeting across the timid shyness of Bojack's eyes as your hand came to rest across his skin. He felt a shiver go through his body, but there was an alertness that came across his worn feautres, ears perked as he met your expression, unreadable, exhausted, worn; and the worst of all, a compact life, the same way Bojack had and everyone he had ever interacted with without knowing how to reach it, of someone who was unheard.

"We don't need to talk about it tonight. That was more than enough for me."

"Are you sure?" His voice raised, tone pipped up as he looked across your eyes with an alert of insistence; he was hardly aware of how his body and his interested was being thrown into the details of the tenderness you were using to describe the tenderness of the children, or the way your motehry nature had a reflection to it as you described it. "We could stay up for as long as you need to. Todd can take care of himself when he wakes up in the morning, and I don't have any plans all day tomorrow."

"It's alright." Your hands grasped across his palm, and Bojack's eyes dimmed and he looked across your expression, but a somber appreciation came across his face as he met the somber statement spoken by you as your eyes met his. "I'd like to rest for a little bit. In a bed, for once."

"Of course." His eyes turned down beside your palm, and the muscles on his features began to lessen into a somber curisotry as his eyes turned down to where the grey sheets were encircled and messy from you messing with it in your distraction of trying to find peace into something so foreign. A polite, catious romanticiism eased across his expression as his eyes turned up while he met your eyes. "Do you mind if, I, uhm-"

"It's your bed. You're the one who gets to decide."

His eyes trend down, and at your words did a empty melancholy ease into his expression as he turned his eyes down. He rolled his shoulders, giving a breath as his stoitc eyes turned you up to you, but a small raise of his smile eased across his lip as he gave you a curt nod, and he began to rasie himself up while he began to ease himself onto the mattress.

"I'm more than fine with the way the night is turning out."

His smile raised up, shyly, as his expression met on yours. Your body began to inch yourself back across the mattress as Bojack hoisted his plush body onto the bed and turned his body over to his side of the bed, turning his head over his shoulder as he gripped his palm onto the pillows and hosited it behind the wall. He leaned his body against the wall as he looked you over, eyes apologteic and timid as they always were while his emotion turned over your body. Your body kept slumped beside the pillows, arms eased under the several stacks of them under your cheek as you kept your face beside them, your body fully curled across the stress while the sheets kept clumped under your hips.

"But when you are ready." His hand come to reach out and gripped across the grey sheet, turning over to the bulge of his stomach as his tender eyes turned over your body again. "Maybe I wouldn't mind listening to more weird shit that you…see." He shurgged, hands gripping otno the grey sheets as he kept his palm gripped by the sheet as it pulled over his sotu body, rspy voice sounding at odds with the tender invite of his tone. "I wouldn't mind that."

"You're sure?" Your eyes eased up to his, eyes glimmered through his while the lights outside reflected across your skin and that same compact emotion in your eyes that was enough to make him choke. He gave you another small nod, lip rasied up as it met the softness of the natural tender ease of his eyes.

"Positive." His eyes lowered as he began to ease himself onto the mattress, head turning over to you as he rested one palm under his cheek as he looked you over, softened as his hand came out to rest across your palm. Your hand reached out, and you didn't allow it to fully embrace across his skin, but it rested an inch away from his hand , and he didn't reach out for your palm, but he kept it lied beside you.

"It feels nice just to know someone, at least." Your shoulders curled up beside your cheek as you looked across Bojck's expression.

"What do you mean?"

"Having no routine, no home-you don't get to know annone. Not even in a distant, lonely way. At least now I know I've interacted with at least one man who I will be able to know I looked inot the eyes of and could experience his live prescece-the world, as it is, robs that from us. Certainly from me, anyway."

"Two." Your eyes turned up to Bojack's, enlightneing into his as your eyes flashed up to his eyes from his rasped and simple spoken word. "You know two." He paused as he cleared his throat. "And it dosen't have to be temporary, either."

Your eyes turned as you searched across his, and gradually did the softnes serenity ease across your face; still worn and far more wrinkled and worse for wear than Bojack would have given for the average woman, but the patience he was giving you for the night was more rewarding than any amount of the comfort he would have gotten from his usual routine/

"Two." You have a nod. "Two is a big difference."

He felt that timid, uncertain smile raise on his expression, and had he not seen the way you were taking him in as if he was a particularly rare ease of an especially notable heart and nature, he would have felt the usual insecurity and loathing towards it; as it was now, there was at the very least a pece and stability.

"I"m glad."

𐂃𐂃𐂃𐂃

"A little hit of the hip against the counter, huh, Bojack? That was all it took to feel like this? You're a piece of shit who feels fucking awesome right now. You feel really good about this. And you should hate yourself for it. But you don't. Because you're Bojack. Fuck you. Yeah, fuck me. Because I'm awesome. I feel good. Goddammit."

Up and down was his air of undecided speech, a conflicting contrast against his stocky appearance and stable tone that almost always gave away his lack of peace.

Still, in that deep tone that was the definition of a man who knew himself well enough inside and out to analyze himself down to his core, there was a layer of acceptance to what he was speaking-and, along with that acceptance, a tired and twisted peace, though the actual stabiltiy of it was rarely felt.

If you had learned anything over the past few days, it was that Bojack was one of those rare few souls who, whether he liked it or not, dug deep into every insane corner of his mind and forced himself to live with it. He not only stared deep into the unstable parts of his unfortunate mind, but also saw it for all its rot for what it was, endured it, and, most impressive of all, lived with it-even with how unforgivably messy it could be.

You only admired him more for that. It seemed like the most attractive thing you had ever heard. As your hand came to rest across the door frame on the chill of that second night of the sunset while your head turned over the door to look at and over the balcony as you pressed your hand across the sliding door and eased your palm over the plastic pink curtains. The breeze picked up for a moment in contrast to the stagance of the large living room that you had spent the majority of the day in, though for the most part, the night was indifferent, calm and still.

"I'll never have to see her again now. She's dead. She's gone. Right along with the last memory of her. Fuck her. And fuck you, too. Piece of cobbled washed up shit. The paps are right about everything, you miserable cunt."

His words were conflicted just as much as anything that he said in regards to himself-everything he was was often balanced between an odd combination between a strange sophistication of elder reflection and experience, complimented by a chaotic unceritaly that borderline on something worthy of disgust. If the racing thoughts that were clearly on that always troubled expression were plastered on his physical form, it would be just as wonky as what went on in his ever racing but hardly decided mind.

"Stupid fucking idiot." His voice was that same honeyed maslcuine drawl tone it always was, molded at least slightly by the cigreetes that he smoked like his life depended on it-he ceritnly had for the past day, and there had been very little, if any, moments where you had found him with his white and soft patterene robe slung around his shoulders, the plush of his brawny stomach and body poking out despite his best efforts, a sign of a boyish trait from a lack of self control of immaturity that as at odds with the mature and worn emotional grace on his snout, cigarette place in his fingertips as it balanced between the spaces of his hands. You were sure that somewhere, in his troubled and muddled mind, that was exactly what he thought the case was-that the cigarettes were the only trustworthy thing he could lean on in the otherwise large xpanse of the ucnerintiy that made up the hours of him trying and failing to fondle taking care of you, even though you made it as clear as you could that you didn't need any help; or at least, you wanted that to be the case. There was a certain independence to the way he arried himself that was grated in a black spiral of self loathing, the honeyed nature of it reduced to an irreparable endearing softness laced with dark hatred to both his eyes and his movements, and under that; an astounding boyish adorability.

"You should go get her and talk about it. But you won't. You'll sit out here like the coward you are. Taking the easy way out. Like always."

You were hesitant to prove his statements wrong-your fingertips were instead becoming the main source of your conflicted energy and focus as you dug your fingertips into the groves of the door.

"What are you even doing? Pacing back and forth like some actor's assistant with a tail between his legs. Who is this guy?"

What you really wanted more than anything was just to touch him-to see and feel him in whatever way was possible with someone who seemed determined to hide from any worthwhile vulnerability he could receive.

Yet being seen seemed to be all that calmed him. For as much a syou knew about him, it seemd to cease those wrecked waves inside him as much as anything else. There wasn't much helping someone as troubled as Bojack; that much you had come to pick up on, as well as the occasional drawled and lazy eyed comments from Todd as he had maade his way around the almost too comfortable and lazy, low energy spaces of the room, bowl in hand and animal slippers causally strewn across his feet-but you had passion for the manner of helping him, not a specific end goal; and anyway, even outside of your inevitable attraction to him, you couldn't deny that you felt you owed him that. There was no logic or rhythm or reason to it-there was only a determined feeling of relentlessly fondness that refused to be left alone.

"Is he still out there beating himself up over breaking over his mother's photograph?"

Todd's lazy voice drawled through the air. You turned your head over your shoulder to meet over where his expression was wincing as he looked over at the sliding doors.

"He is not going to let that one go anytime soon. The thing about Bojack-never realized that everything in life is just a matter of whatever works right now." He waved up both hands, comically as he looked up with that usual causal energy in his eyes that you were picking up a few manneism from; and even a bit of wisdom, in the way someone as heavy as you did from living with someone with the opposite nature. "Who cares about the last thing you did and ether it world out or not? It happened. Now there's just learning and doing something different. Nothing we do has any actual long term lasting effect, right? So what's the point of being so hard on yourself over anything? Just do what you can Todd-day."

Your head turend over your shoulder as you raised your lip up; you were overly warm from the stagnce of the house that day, and your mind was foggy yourself, and Bojack himself had become increasingly more distant when he had knocked over a photo of his mother in his study while nursing a whiskey, and it had increased as the night had gone on.

"It's understandable how hard it is to let things go. Not to mention that there's more than likely other reason behind it, I imagine? Nothing is ever one thing with anyone. That's what makes life so complicated."

You believed your words; despite your fear of the future when Bojack rightfully kicked you out, there was an indescribable emotional peace that was with you as the day had gone on. Now, you were just bidding your time to try and figure out the best way to make the odd, bittersweet and fairly empty day-but how nice it had been to be able to get to know people in a true and genuine way through the mundanities that made up real life-into something that would have at least a somewhat bearable conclusion for all of you.

Todd shrugged; in his palm was a breath analyzer that he had received earlier from his company that day, a simple plastic thing that rested in his pale palms that he had been playing with, uneven teeth poked out of his mouth and eyes enlightened the past few hours as his energetic voice had filled the air, Bojack accompanying it with his hands on his lowered ears now and then as he paced around the living room.

'Oh, he definitely does. But it was hours ago, and frankly, he dosen't even care about his mom. So-what does it matter. He needs to let it go."

"Will he?"

"Defitnely not. If it wre easy being around being someone as unhealed as Bojack, I would have stayed here for the rest of my life. Nice house, terrible energy."

Todd's eye closed as he raised the breath analyzer to his eye, the other one closed as he looked over and into the small plastic hole that met into his eyes. He gave a quick breath and a shrug as the contentment stayed on his features while he lowered the device down to the box beside the living room table; full of the same products.

"I'll be back in about an hour. Let me know how the sad sack routine with him goes; or don't. Either way, I'm going to be super busy for the next few hours."

"Is there anything I can say to make him come out of it? Even if only a little?"

"Jeez-I can never tell." His body leaned forward, body completely woven over with the baggines of his clothes as he turned his body over to the box and grunted as he picked it up, barely managing to keep himself balance as he gave you another confident and easgoing raise of a smile. "Well, good luck. I'll be around. Call me if you need anything-but also, don't, because I'll be busy, and more importantly, don't worry about Bojack. People like him is more flair and drama and little battles inside themselves more than it is anything actually going on, ya know?"

You watched, silently, as Todd tripped over his feet while he grunted and lifted the boc up to his chest, and with that did he begin to walk his way across the open space of the living room while he hummed a small song to himself; the floors were empty for the most part; something suprisning considering the amount of the causal blankets, cheap American products and the thrown bottles Bojakc had done at least a handful fo times while arguing with himself or Todd while you had watched curled up on the softa while he had thought you weren't looking.

Your head turned as Todd occupied himself with opening the door, shoving his body against it, and carrying his way out. Your head turned as you eased your attention back over to Bojack, who hd settled for noe pacing across the balcony, both hands behsind his back, ears lowered, worn and graceful face plastered with conflict and emotion of melcholny while his stomach poked out.

You stepped froward as you slide the door further beside you while you stepped yoru way out, but when you saw a paricualry intense flair of the muscles on Bojack's expression while his teth poked and he gave a grunt of aggravation, you paused. The problem with Bojack was that he could be a pleasant array of naive warmth that was desperate for affection-but just as much an unpredictable wave of his own wrecked violence that could explode anywhere at any given moment. Though he showed remorse for the matter, he never looked back.

It was both intimating in a horrifying fashion, yet all at once so alluring to what you had discovered in those soft night of breathing together, his stocky thighs around yours as brawny fingers danced on your hips, half assed jokes leaving his whiskey stained breath as he muttered them in your ear.

Or the alternative, where he would go on one of his political fired rants, pacing back and forth, speaking words through a crossfaded speech with a passion that you knew could only come from someone who cared about things-even when he told anyone the chance he got that nothing mattered, and uou listened to him intnetl, even with the both of you knowing that that truth was consistently and unignorably true.

He was a twist of an unforgiving conflict, both in regards to how he felt about the world and others, but mostly of the caged torment that made up his personal existence, and it was one of the reasons why you couldn't look away from the heart pulling string of a mess he could be.

You closed your eyes as you leaned your head against the the wall that was now outside, the grey meeting against the back of your head while the yellow stagance of the inside light spilled out from the windows. Bojack's muttering had become low enough that you could still hear his disgruntled muttering, but you could now only pick up on a few words here and there.

The fact of the matter was that you missed him. You always did; or rather, the specific way he made you feel that, though only knowing him for less than two days, there was something about him that inspired something inside of you that echoed back through your life and touched on every loss, every joy, every gain and everything in between to get to the point where it now had an odd sense of romanticism and nostgila to it that all lead back to him.

He had, admittedly, been someone who was a complicated mix between impressive but all at once mind-numbingly common when you had first met him. The stature of his body was typical for a fifty year old person bewildered with his own existence. He didn't always necessarily have anything insightful to say. Outside of the realm of his personal suffocated Hollywood bubble, it seemed as if he hardly knew much of the world at all outside of his own inevitable short term perspectives that put more problems out than it brought back in. And he didn't seem to care much about redeeming the fact. He was the embodiment of a self-indulgent, low eyed and exasperated middle aged man who seemed only half interested in bettering the fact.

That was the exact contradiction of it all from your infatuation's end-once you had wrapped your arms around his plush and warm waist, once you had seen that insanity that polluted those crazed eyes once the layer of morality fell away after he took a drag, once you had seen that snappy and unforgiving asshole side of his manner that was jaded to his core, that cocky eyed lazy stout look of prevelvee from his eyes with an edge of a spark of natural charamia and emotionall intelligence with that over warm saturated confident grin tat spoke of selfishness and natural complacency of the world, beyond want or need of understanding, you found you had never craved anyone more; and to have reason to was undesirable.

Once you had felt the vibration of his surprising consideration for you against yours on that emotional sharp laced bed ridden night, there had been something inside of you that had never wanted to pull away again. There was a complacent but ever ending intertwining of mystery inside of those colored back depths of his tanned wrinkles puffed sleep deprived eyes-you painted the portrait in the back of your own eyelids now to think of the surprising addiction of his complicated but welcomed messy humanity. For eyes that were so black, you had never seen ones that held so much color and compact emotion to them-there was a spell of fired orange and green gleam inside of those carved humanoid eyes on an emotional degree that refused definition, traced and molded with something that wasn't entirely unlike loveable, unlifted, and deranged melocohony-both goofy and hardened all at once.

"Goddammit. Talk to her. Tell her you love-no like-her. Not love, dumbass. She'll look at you like you grew three heads and she's probably right for that. Tell her anyway. Todd won't shut the hell up about how much you're an idiot for letting this relationship die before it even had a chance to leave the ground otherwise, washed up horse hag for constant hire."

You wanted to tell him he was wrong. Not that you hadn't already countless times before, but any genuine positive, especially one regarding love, seemed to fall on deaf ears. Your hand hesitated against the door as you considered going back inside-but instead you found yourself shoving it closed just enough to shut out the distant buzzing that came from the on and off arious machines inside the house; the fridge, the ongoing washing machine, all of which youw ere convinced Bojack ketp on to drown out the silence, and istead opened up your senses to hear the constant pollution of the outside traffic even in the distance. You felt the cold breeze of the air that was separated just enough that you could taste the natural tang of the bit of nature that surrounded Bojack's house. It was apart but separate from the chaotic scenery of the city- not unlike the melancholy raspy muttering of the worn man in front of you now, who was the very definition of a mascluine air traced in a naive and lost desire to be listened to.

"She has nowhere to go, and you've done this before. I'll call my PC tomorrow and tell her to stop looking for projects. I can't work like this. I can't do anything like this. I shouldn't work like this. I'll ruin everything even more than I have. Tomorrow morning, when I wake up. First thing. No pressure on the waking up part, though. Nothing is that important."

Your eyes turned up and over to where the buildings were sitting across the gray tint of the balcony and the railing over where Bojacls' stout body was pacing. Beyond and over where the buildings of the city where, several roads away from Bojack's levitated isolated house, was there the glint of neon colors of distant fireworks that were now starting to glimmer across the front of the buildings with the neon lights. They weren't close enough yet to do anything close to making any noice, but you saw the muscles on Bojack's face grimace and tense while his brows furrowed.

You wanted so say something; anything to get rid of the foggy and muddled tension that made up his words that were contrasting and hanging into the air that were an equal contrast of memories that made u constant cheap confliction, with only small minute relief brought to him now and then to whatever small bubbles through negative thought he could gather. Your attraction to his sout, bumbly form was something that was just as consistent and enriching as much as it had been when those uncertain, waning eyes had looked you over a night or two ago; time was passing in the stagnant house in a warm and easy going way, so different from the constant challenge of the streets and the way you were force to try and dress up even the slight amount of sanity, strength, sense of the otherwise blurry day and the naturally focused and passing by eyes of the people around you; not worth knowing, but you couldn't fight your unfulffilled nature.

And the long graceful trail of his mane that traveled down his neck-those black flowing locks that twisted inself into some sort of majestic brand of a specific humble and softened narrative the few times he allowed you to the quieter times of the apartment when Todd hadn't allowed him the much more preferred distraction of back and forth loud banter. It was a rare occurrence that only happened when Todd was out for a moment to pick up his order of his analyzers before he had come strutting in with that cocky reassured look on his face, and the few real friends he had were busy enough that you could hear the peaceful buzzing of the air conditioning while he had muttered a few words to you in that grounding, soft rasped considerate voice. His head would lean backward on the couch, his lips lifting up into a content smile as his teeth poked out in that adorable way they did when you offered your occasional word. Though you had long since come to know that people and relationships in and of themselves were something that was changing in its quality constantly due to the person's decision and promised nothing, you still felt a certain undeniable warmth that made you feel a sense of peace and identity you hadn't known existed the way it came to you as he talked to you with his natural graceful rasped voice, the lowering of his eyelids and the cocky talk of his somber tone.

It was made even more artistic by the wind that swept against the coarse black hair now; the tuft of hair that sat between his fragile ears was caressing and blowing against the tip of the diamond that graced his snout. His every intertwined complicated detail seemed distant but attached to what Bojack knew was true about himself-that he would always be just close enough to himself to know that he didn't want to know anything more about himself, and to be aware enough that even that desire would never be promised, not unlike the way you forced yourslf to think of every negativeity possibility that could surround your existence for the hope of making it feel less.

"She doesn't love you. She thinks she does. She shouldn't love you. And that's all there is. That's all there ever has been, in general. And that's-good. It's good to remember that this is just another passing thing. Dating, Lord help me, marriage? With everything the world has done and put each other through, that shouldn't even be a thing. "

His truest self was in that lost disgruntlement, but it took so much to take it out. Inside of that scarred loathing something drenched in the desire to cling onto some warm experience he had tasted but didn't understand. You saw it in his cocky, detached and hungover eyes as he had leaned his plush body lazily against the grey couch earlier that day, in the cocky raise of his lip as his warm and naturally fatherly expression had talked to you with an emotionally intelligence and grace that came to him naturally just by virtue of existing as he was in ways people would never get on their best day. And beyond that was the fight to have anything that could make him happy-anything to take away the mania of existence even for a short while. He felt he didn't deserve it-he had proven that he thought that much from the occasional slews of thought such as he was displaying now.

You didn't want to continue to live that night; like every day, every activity felt like a forced attempt to find an agreement with your energy where there wasn't any. You found yourself thinking how nice it would have been, as much as human psychology would allow it, to let the soft black of permeant sleep to come over your eyes in the middle of Bojack teasing and talking to you with his discretion; to let his somber voice that calmed you beyond understanding to be the last memory you had of a stagance you were immensely grateful for in contrast to the unpredictability of life.

He would continue to be tormented, because one thing was clear-he wanted that understanding from himself more than anything, to the extent that his more human and endearing side-of which he was more than most- needed it like food or sleep, no matter how much he would deny it to himself. Yet it was something he wouldn't allow himself to quite feel-which rendered your task, one of which should have been so mind numbingly simple but instead felt impossible-of loving him damn near unheard of. And all the while, there was the strain of knowing this was just another small blimp in the muggy and foggy lostness of your suffering and the nothingness you were as the loud world continued to pass you by while you tried to grasp for whatever you could as an individual to find an agreement with the forced existence you had to try and avoid suffering for as long as you could.

Fireworks bombed from the front of the balcony, tracing the previously neon lit balcony with a sudden drench of red fire. Bojack flinched as he snapped his head up towards the black sky, annoyance crossing his previously downcast features as he gave a timid, tender breath, stout plump body and ears perked suddenly flown backward as he darted his wide eyes over to the sky-and then a flash of that annoyance.

"Fireworks again? What are we celebrating, the increasing chaos of bullshit that consists of most celebrities' careers I know?"

Another blow of fireworks; this time a drench of purple and blue light. Bojack made his way to the end of the balcony, flicking the cigarette off of the rail as you heard an almost boyish moan coming out of his lips as he snapped his head upward.

"Got enough pretentious blow to jack yourselves off to, knock off dictators?"

You smiled in a bittersweet sense at the mess of his angry, slurred words. Wisdom and how to navigate life was one of a literal constant journey, and you felt with him, for once it felt human, rather than a stagnant textbook survival. The fireworks were too far away to be heard from his protests, but if he got drunk enough, he would continue doing it for the rest of the night.

His arm was slung against the balcony, now, stout legs swaying and holding up the upper plush round form of his body, the red fire light of the fireworks tracing against his bronzed, suntanned skin as his puffed and emotional lathered eyes turned up to the sky. You took this change in energy to walking forward now, your mind made up. Your hands came to rest on both of your arms as you felt your hands meet on the fresh white dress, the sleeves see though that Bojack had found on impulse to give you earlier that morning before the day had started. He had told you as he had helped you dress, awkwardly but with a sense of grace and romanticism of someone clumsy in intimacy which added to the emotional endearment, that he had gotten it from a woman who has more sophisticated than the usual who occupied his bedside.

"And she left this thing behind?" Your voice was humorous as his chubby, timid hands had begun to raise the fabric up your body. "Someone as sophisticated and as thoughtful to leave a dress behind?"

"Of course she was drunk by the time she left. She stumbled out with one of my old shirts. The thing you should know about this place whether you ever come back or not-no one ever leaves here with the same quality as how they came in."

Your arms eased across the white see through fabric as you continued to walk past the neon glow of the pool, your head titled to the side as you began to tentatively walk over to where his snout was raised up to the sky, expression worn in a defiant way with an especially asputning grace despite the hard look in his eyes, ears lowered, stout body leaned across the balcony. His sunglasses were pushed to the front of his ears, pulled backward into the black locks that sat on the top of his head like a drooping crown. He was permanently punished into a youth he didn't enjoy in his mind, that much was clear. His white shirt clung onto his body, enwrapped and somewhat tight around the middle part of his plush stomach that dropped forward as he allowed his body to slump. Around his neck the trail of his dark coarse threads of his mane stop at the bottom of the shirt, melting into his body that quite literally displayed a certain chaotic humanity of behaviorism of someone who was more distraction than clarity, and suffered for it. A mature and sophisticated color was the main color of his dark skin-which you couldn't help but notice seemed to make every pessimistic and unpleasant frown seem that much more true to his depressed and jaded nature into that same alluring grace of someone who was both humbly clumsy, endearing and charismatic and sophisticated at the same time,and taking him him, despite everything, your head had never been more clear.

His head turned towards the side in disapproval as the midnight hair slapped along his neck through the breeze of the slight coolness of the outside balcony that eased across his snout lowering his handsome features into a grimace as it was greeted with another boom of the fireworks that cut through the moment he had of thought.

"I get it. I understand, pompom assholes. Bojack sucks up to some woman who comes over from the other side of the stree and then breaks his mom's photograph after she's dead in one night and now I have to deal with some indescribable cosmetic karama from this firework bullshit when I was tyring to unwind and get drunk and forget myself for a night. I can read the sarcasm from here, douchebags."

His body shuddered; a gag left his lips just as he was tone raising the tone of his voice as while the low toned words hung clumsily into the air; Bojack's voice was too low, humble to the plush aodrbaility of his body to be made for long term travel, and somehow that quality only added to his endearment. He was clearly only a few more aggressively spoken words from vomiting as the pout in his eyes turned to a look of helplessness that made that desire you had to love and protect him to an unbearable degree as his hands kept gripped on the balcony, panting as his ears lowered while he turned his head down over the balcony awkwardly for a moment. From the amount of drugs and alcohol he had taken, it was hardly a surprise;

"Bojack." Your voice was small; and as soon as you spoke, the awkwardness of the loud fireworks cut off your words. Though there was something about your conversations earlier that day that had been the perfect amount of emotional intelligence, shifting through the problems that dressed up your reality but slow enough to process them, it was clear that the impossible allure you felt for him, stout body, plush curving stomach, slouching body, mannerisms of sloppiness of arms over the couch and eyelids lowered and cocky smile raised up into a cocky emotional flawed hue of someone with plenty of character flaws and the perfect combination of lovability you craved, it was clear that there was more need than you had antipcaited that came from something beyond physical circumstances. You had been lost on the streets, Bojack more than comfortable in his stagance; and yet he was the one that needed cradling, as it was with the constant unrpeditacility of human nature that escaped all rules.

Your head snapped over to the fireworks as you began to step your light pale feet further across the balcony, and with another throated choke of your throat did you try;

"You don't need to worry about the broken photograph. Let's go inside. Enjoy the night, like we both agreed."

But Bojack raised up his arms drunkenly as his eyes winced with a heat while his ears flew back, turning his eys up to the continued exploding fireworks, unaware of even processing your attempt as you walked to him further.

"Hey-hey-Let's all cleebrate the fucking party of the monster being dead instead! Now that's worth a party!"

The clumsy sarcasm in him, comical as it was executed, had all the need for help it spoke. You couldn't do it. You weren't going to stand on the pinnacle of what you wanted to do for him; which, more than anything, was to have him fall apart without being alone. He deserved to fall apart, to feel whatever it was that seemed to never leave him alone. He could rip himself from the inside out, and then slowly, as much as was possible from what was left of him, would you try to put him back together, at least in a process that was similar to the small a warm ways the both of you had talked through the afternoon as the sun had rose into the business of the world of the city for the day, and then had settled into an orange that, combined with the soft rasp and talk of Bojack's tone and the comments of the detailed words he spoke, did it feel as if the ever changing tide of human emotion and of precpetion of existence begin to change into something that matched the indscribale lonning of something not on earth that was one of the closest things you would ever get in life; a timeless nostalgia, biter with how rich it was, not unlike the natural sense of home he gave you.

Your pace sped up as you closed off the large feet between you and the aggressio in Bojack's eyes as you walked onto the patio, pressing your hands against your clothes in anticipation of whatever version of him you would get that night. He had been more unpredictable than usual of what you were used to, even with the large blundered men with their crazed eyes and their fattned liquor lips and the blown out bellow of their lips as they mounted you. Even from one afternoon did you feel a mark of some strange pain that was inside of you of an unfulfilled life, and through him had the pain become marked with depth, at the very least.

"I'll kill myself if you talentless infamous hags keep doing this. I'll blow my brains out, and then you'll really have a loud noise to compare to your dogshit fireworks!" Bojack waved his arm clumsily ove the balcony with the intention of wanting to throw something over it, despite the fact that he had already tossed his cigarette. "How does that sound, bozos?"

The angry, brooding look on his face was still traced by the red of the light of the fireworks, now visible to you as you walked your way by his side, eyes turning over him as you considered taking his body into your hands. The clairty of mind you had acquired, the odd richness in your dynamic from your words earlier that day, had given you a clairty of energy and inetnion where there was usually only foggy mood drops and disassciaoted cope, and you wanted to use what he had given you as best as you could enjoy it.

"Bojack, leave it alone."

The soft, carved sculpted body of his overweight form traced up against the side of the glass that was in front of him as he continued to lean his elbows against the balcony. Your hands managd to graze across his arm, and finally, with a quick interval that the noise of the fireworks gave you, did you manage a quick;

"They're not for you, Bojack."

Bojack gave a clumsy and abrupt noise out of his lip, snapping his head over to you, eyes puffy and foggy and pathetic in their lostness. His ears flew back as he winced and looked you over, too lost ina drug haze to process that you were there.

"Like hell they're not for me." He chuckled, in that same superficial cocky fashion as he wigged his brows and spewed out; "What kind of brainless tongue eyed flaming whore would think I was serious?"

You smiled, albeit with a bit of exhaustion. "I know you're drunk. I guess you lable as woman as that."

"All woman?" Bojack's eyes became dry as he leaned his elbow on the balcony, then gave a causal shrug, dry eyes and snout turning back to the city. "No, not all woman. Not unless I sleep with them, which is-" He paused as his lips pressed together, wincing as he gave a shrug and spoke somberly; "All woman, yes."

"Thought I would say goodbye before I left." Your hand kept on his arm that was dressed in a lumped hangover across his shoulders, detached and frumpled as you tried to keep his body at least somewhat balance. "Forgot me already?"

His ears flickered, and his eyes widened to suggest only the lightest current narrative that he cared. He paused, as if frozen at the idea of your being there. You found it endearing how quickly he switched over from a more erratic fire to a reflective romantic when he was around someone he cared about-if he cared about you, and right now, so different from the ass feeling expression he had across his snout as he talked to you earlier, but with that allure of emotional intellinece, were you uncertain if that man had cared of it he had just been convinelty entertained.

Whether he did care about you or not was something that remained to be seen, but you allowed yourself the fantasy that that irreplaceable curiosity and comfort you felt towards him was shared by him, no matter how complicated and contradicting it was in the moment of his mood, switching between thoughtful and reflective, and then to messy and erratic.

"I didn't know you were behind me." His face almost held a sort of soft embarrassment to it-his ears flew downward as the anger melted from his eyes while he swung his swaying head back over to you. He still had the same unpredictable air, but he was clearly allowing you to see his gentler side reserved only for the occasional person he considered with it for the afternoon. He lowered heavy lidded eyelids over you, emotional glimmering as he looked you over. "I didn't wake you up, did I?"

"Even if you had, I wouldn't have minded. And I wasn't sleeping. I was saying goodbye to Todd."

"Todd?" Bojack's eyes widned again, then lowered in exasperation. "You tell that kid that he can stay here, but only if-" His eyes widned with a sudden physical discomfort, and a sickly sound of vomit threated his throat, and the flew a first to his lip, then had his eyes lowered as he eased his body forward, one hand coming to rest on the bulge of his stomach as a weakness glimmered across his features while he bellowed his body forward. Your other hand came to rest on the middle of his back, head titled in concern, your other hand coming to rest on his stomatcm.

"Let me take you inside. Get you to bed."

"No. That's ok." Bojack's hand waved clumsily in front of him as he continued to breath deep, and you felt the curve of his stomach ease across your palm as he continued to pant. "The last thing I need is to get some mommy putting me to bed."

You leaned your body down until you were leaning on your legs until you were eye level with Bojack, even as he was focusing on his breathing with his eyes closed, expression troubeeld as his ears kept flicked back.

"Alright. Then-here."

You leaned your back against the railing behind you as you guided him to follow, trying to calm the rhythmic thudding of your heart. You could feel the same pattern of his as your hand pressed across his chest, his eyes wincing as he allowed his heavy stout body to be guided by your hand and over to the glass balcony You didn't know when your desire for him had become so strong that it was almost impossible to deal with, but you would have to to be by him, even with all the bwidleremnet; both for yourself and for the way he made you feel.

"It's kind of nice seeing you let loose every now and then."

"Oh, yeah?" Bojack's breath contuiend, heavy as his eyes turned over to you, ears lowered. "Have we even known wach other long enough for an every now and then?"

"Honestly, after the afternoon and the way it felt, I think so." Your hand that was rested on his curved back began to settle behind his hair. "And I mean that in a good way."

Another pant, his helpless expression showing off his authentic helplessness; an adorable protective flawed humanity. "For some reason I can't get myself to believe you."

"I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. If I've learned anything from suffering and having to take care of myself, it's that the more you become in tune with yourself, the more you feel relief from any experience or anything anyone tells you, who is just someone with a journey with themselves that hasnt figured out their own understanding of their journey yet the way you have. And suffering is the best teaching for all worthwile tools of life, with existence with yourself and existence. After that, there's just what feels true to you-and today felt the most worthwhile blimp in my wandering that I've had in a long while."

"Very, uh-" Bojack's eyes closed as he gave another sickly choke of his throat, expression tense as the muscles on his face eased with conflict as his ears turned down. "Very thoughtful. Not sure about convincing." Another dramatic awkward breath of his lip, and his eyes widned as he convulted forward.

"Oh, god, here we go again!"

His body convulsed forward, plush part of his stomach becoming sounder as his body doubled forward. Your hand kept on him in the attempt of keeping his somewhat stable as you watched hum bellow forward-then pause as he winced as his body turned back again.

"It's alright. Take your time."

"Not sure if I had a choice." Bojack gave a breath that was large enough that it spoke as a reset, and as another set of fireworks wet off and traced across his snout with the multicolor neon light surrounding his skin as he doubled back onto his thighs, you felt that indescribable profound feeling of life that was especially made and opened anc experienced only by loving and spending time with him; an inner stretching of something inside of you that spanned out beyond life that only he could inspire in its specific way as his presence as it interacted with whatever road had molded you in life inspired you, anf for a moentn you felt yourself choked with something indescribable that went beyond attraction or even love.

Boajck's ears lowered all the way backward-there was some shame in his eyes as he opened them again while trying to catch his breath, but still that same sense of confident aggression as he tried to collect himself as he heard the implosion of the fireworks again. You could tell there were things he wanted to say, but you knew it was less than likely you would hear it tonight-and you found that for the first time, neither the passage of time of the unknowing of understanding existence was intimating to you; in his presence, everything was so slowed and brought to such clarity that there was a cantonment that overcame you that you could only desperately wish you had always had.

You wouldn't push him. You knew he would tell you when he was ready.

"Why did you come out to see the fireworks."

"To get drunk and complaina bout how little I like the fireworks. Obviously." His ears flew back, and a slight sickness made him more mature as he gave another heated breath. "And-maybe, just for a little while, to try and get some air, because congested emotions and getting drunk is a very overly comfortable process. The fresh air helps."

"Why not some television? I could shutt he door, put the curtains over for you."

"Jesus. No thank you." Bojack's eyes turned up in a flair as he began to collect himself into his grumpy mundane grounding as he eased himself up. "It either consists of jackasses that I've met in real life, which ruins the whole movie for me, or it's some washed up cliche that's so predictable I can say the words before they even leave the characters' mouths."

Another explosion of fireworks interrupted what would have been an at least somewhat needed conversation to pull things forward. Bojack let out a heavy sigh as he straightened his body up, placing a hand on his back as he turned the annoyance of his eyes over to the fireworks; the dark almond of his expression made further from the reflection of the rich colors as they eased into his expression.

"God, they don't stop, do they? There's really nothing going on upstairs for these guys."

You laughed, lightly. "You don't even know who they are."

"I don't need to. Once you've met ten people in Hollywood, you've met all of them. Or maybe in general."

There was a sudden ribbon that came from the sky that was drenched in the multcolors of the red and orange and hue of the blue that drenched the already profound richness of the sky that settled over the Los Angeles buildings. A sudden large expanse high pitched noise came from a plump and pink tinted body that as threaded from the ribbon that became to implode across the air; Bojack's eyes became disapiited of all judgemnt as his eyes winded while he snapped his head forward, looking over to where there was a silhouette of a pig woman being draped against several different ribbionst that were now wrapping around the plush of her body. Something tender and helples,s curious came across his features as his teeth poked as he snapped his attention over to the pig woman helpleslssly.

"What is that? How did they do that?"

Your head snapped over as you watched where Bojack's eyes were turning; the pig woman was someone sort and stout, and she seemed somewher ein ebwteen the hills that were drenched from the high passage of Boajck's house and the overland of the hills and the feet that made its way from his house and over to the clutter of the buildings rested under he implsoive expanse of the fireworks. Bojack's eyes widened into a tumbling helplessness as his breathing cease while he watched her body tumble through the length of the extensive sense of ribbons that seemed to source from nowhere, spewing out from an indeifnable part of the ground that made the nostalgia and bittersweet feet of length of the sin of the majority and the isolation reflection of it from Bojack's house as her body began to twist and turn across the ribbon while it began to grip and twist across her form. The heat of the purpose of focus of being with Bojack that he gave you where everything else feel to stagnce had already been addciitg enough as it was; when there was so much life, humanity, attraction, and an almost inosmprehnsible and ucnofnotainn amount of human life where previously there had only been emptienss and despair and empty space, everything else had fallen to a comeptley irrlevanncy in the ake of the magic he had given you with his presence that was the only thing that dressed up a woehtile or even human exitnece.

The pig woman and her stout body was now the only thing that gave even the slightest equqivilent to the dizziness of the rich drug he gave you that could only come from that kind of conenction that was behind everything you had ever craved, and your withdrawal had been disorinteing but had finally made a worthwhile agreement with the emptiness of the other side of your life. Your head snapped over you shoulder as you looked over where you caught a glimpse of her face through the fireworks; her long lashes closed, a content pout lip across her snout as her body continued to turn and become eased witha grae across the white ribbons made from something silk and delicate that came outside of what seemed like a dream. Her head turned up as the relfecive expansive color of the light eased across her ever moving body as she contuiend to turn herself across the ribbon that expanded across the curve of her body while the reflection of the lights continued to implode behind her.

"It feels incredible! The celebration of the way things are poking out through the darkness and the diapir! The grace of being able to find a punch through of the suffering of humanity's failure for two people who found each other, even for a little while!"

Her laugh began to putcher through even the statement of the implosion of the fireworks, her voice trembling with a rrleief so human, so pure that it was enough to plaster goosebumps against your skin, and for Bojack to raise his vulenrbale eyes glossened with the richness of the fireworks across his eyes as he leaned forward and looked at you with his question, ears lowered, eyes snapped over to the pig woman a few miles away as her body twisted through the sky, voice trembling with profound relief.

"Glorious day! How wonderful, to finally have something human happen-even just a little bit of a light in the dark. The entire world must feel it-Los Angeeles must be bowing down on its knees celebrating over it!"

"Is she ok?" Bojack's voice was trembling, tender as his eyes, one clumsily winced from his drinking turned over to you in question. Your eyes snapped over to the woman, and with your hands pressed on the lovability that was the curve of Bojack's stomach and his panting on your hand, his eyes following yours as you snapped your eyes over to the turning pig woman, her body still trialing against the fireworks, the surrounding ribbon increasing across her body, the fireworks delicaltey tracing across her plush body; and there was a profound extent of how her body was turning over the sky and with the reflection of the light behind her as her stout legs kicked through the ribbon. His questioning, tender eyes turned over to you as he raised his body upward, your ehad turned over to where you saw her body continue to turn over halfway u the sky. "Do you see her?"

"I do."

There was a small suggestion of something curved over the sky, the vague cut through of a hint of a light that was poking out not unlike something that was a hill peeking out and over turning sunlight that come from a universal source rather than earthly, poking and peering through the multicolored clouds that surrounded and complemented behind her form. Bojack gave a breath as he abruptly began to raise himself up, his hand pressed on yours with yours in his as he stumble his detached body over to the edge of the balcony, eyes winced as he turned over and watched where the silhouette of her body cintuiend to the enfurled by the enwrapping satin around her body.

"Are you ok?" Bojack's voice clmusily called out intot hat same drunken way he had before, though his word cut off as he became aware of how fruitless it was; she was too far, through the astounding and toehrwordly echo that came acorss with the sight increased as the flickering of the universe shine behind her traced behind the twirling of her body and the see through satian, the clouds of which were multiocloed from the flash of the fireworks and the place where there was now mundane black where there ahd been blue hue.

She gave another laugh that echoed in its otherwordyliness, her head cracked back in her amusement, and with her chubby arms pulled out from the stan that wrapped around her body did several more thrown out clothes began to become thrown over and around her disposition, the joy of her expresison not leaving her cantonment. More satin rags where beginning to the thrown across her and against the front of the sky; Bojack's eyes widned as his head turned over the balcony, hands gripped on the edge of it as he turned his head forward.

"Where are they coming from? What are they doing?"

His voice was trembling and made even more vulnerable and beautiful due to his worry, and his teeth poked while ears lowered back as he turned his eyes down and over to the street below him. Your hand kept behind Bojack's back, turning your eyes over to the wonderment of the thin satin trails that were being thrown around the pig woman's turning body; the contentment on her features further executed from the light of the fireworks and the tracing of her body across the of the light, adding to the hue of her profound reflection on the contentment of her features.

The satin trials of the rags coutniend to be thrown around her body, and there was a timeless harrowing hue fo release from the depth of the beauty oft he imagine, the small spot of the eternal light poking through where there ahd been the blue before and the shooting of light, the turning of the stout pig woman's body as she became encaptured by the trails of the satin rags and the rest that were being thrown up around her; and then finally, with a sudden turn over from the middle bit of the peeking light and over through what seemed like the travel of the light over the hill did it disappear over and intot he ckouds, and the woman's turning of her celebration began to fade behind the artificial neon of the lights, but before the rest of the satin rags could even come close to the turning of her body through the sky did she give a last aburpt laugh through her lips, her voice trailing through the air with another compact and thrill of a laughter as she spoke with someting that had such incessant apperecaiton of relief as the rest of the satian trials fell down along with her body falling down with an ease and down to the vast expanse of the hills underneath her;

"At least-a little humanity!"

Her voice trailed out into an echo as the satin then began to ease over her snout until her voice trailed out and over tinto the air. Her body fell backward, and with a tug of her satian across her body did the beauty of the suerrality begin to disappear into the vast expaonse of the hills beyond that made u the separation of Bojac's existence and the noise of the world. The trials turned down, and the fireworks contuiend.

Bojack gave an abrupt breath and stepped back, eyes wide with panic as his expression snapped over the space of the trials of the thread of where there had been the bittersweet ,ecoclony of something as profound and indeiceiable as much as the raspy soft spoken afternoon between the both of you had been. His eyes dilated as he stepped his way back, his eyes turning up in panic as his ees winced while his expression expanded over the sky.

"Where did she go? Am I drunk?" His eyes, graceful in melchcolcyy and wear snappeed over to you with another soft breeze easing across his mane. An awkward tense hiccup as he managed; "What happend?'

"Come by the deck chair." When you pulled him by the arm and he tugged away, your head snapped over to him in insisntece, voice calling over the increased fireworks as you spoke; "Please, Bojack."

Bojack's head snapped over to where the pig woman had been; now nothing but the emptiness of the space, his eyes tender, helpless and disotntied; much as you, though you felt hesitant to admit it. "But where did she go?"

His voice was imposisnly tender and human, and it made you feel that indescribable depth that the pig women and the satian of them being thrown into the air in balls of celebration from the see trough fabric and the unmasked and unseen glint of the while light burn in your eyes in the same overporccesed human and magic extant your time with Bojakc gaev you. Your hand kept on his arm as he kept turning his helpless wincing eyes over to the sky, but your palms kept on him, tugging him forward and over tot he chairs, and witha tripping of his clumsy feet did he turned over to you as he began to follow.

"Wonder leads to misery, misery lead sto cope, cope leads to wonder. What we need right now is for me to calm you down."

"It felt like a dream." Bojack's tone was insecure, wobbling, but most importalty with that tender boyish curisotry that sent shiver down your skin even further with that incimprehnsible, rich humanity that could have kileld you if you felt it too deeply, much like the eerie wonder form the pig woman and the strange eerier celrbraiton that came from the richest emotion of relief only after the blackest of times of suffering and tragedy expereince for a long time "Incredible

Bojack's eyes snapped over to you as the surrerality began to die down, his eyes watered and his bottom eyes winced as he snapped his head over to you with his lowered. He took an abrupt and broken breath, his eyes snapping back up to the sky with his eyes frantically dilating over the sky.

"Did you see that, though? What was that? What happened?"

You tried to keep your focus on keeping your hand by his body as you began to stumble him to the side of the pink deck chair, his eyes protruded and snapped up while a tension eased across the paraslation of his expression, breathing timidly.

"Something that the both of us have to try and ignore while we take care of one another. Or-while I take care of you."

Bojack contuiend to breath heavily, his eyes winced as his ears splayed while he turnd his eyes down in panicked frantic thought while he looked in front of him, eyes dilated and panicked. There was a black look of dispiar across his expresson and panic of bewilderment, but your hands kept by his body while you pulled him over to the deck chair, and with his stout legs tripping did he allow you to ease him over to it.

"What was that she said?" Bojack's eyes winced as he turned his head up to the sky; one of which was now full of the same dark hue of the blue where there had been the pig woman turning across the rags with abrupt pleasure across her features and the thrown satin cloths against her a moment before. Bojack's ears lowered as while he contuiend to breath timid as he allowed his body to be rested beside the deck chair. "What was she saying about the humanity shit?"

"You said it yourself." Your eyes turned up to the twisted wreckage of Bojack's wonderment as he began to rest across te back of the chair, even as he contuiend to breath desperately. "Who knows what they plan or why around here, right? We have better things to do than to try and figure it out."

Though Bojack's eyes were still glinted with a dilation of desperation, there was a dim of acceptance on his eyes as he wincd and allowed his body to lean fully across the deck chair. He leaned his head back across the chair, teeth poked as his winced and worn eyes turned up the bleak sky thay usually dressed across the deck; for the time being was there a moment of silence.

"Breaht. Take it easy." Your hand kept on the bulge of his stomach as he continued to breath heavily from your palm as he gave another shaken breath, eyes closed as the wrinkles of his skin settled across his expression.

"Would if I could. Unfortunately these guys are full of so much senseless noise that I can barely stand to hear myself think."

His eyes were pointed even as he kept his head leaning back behind the chair, one hand coming to rest on his panting stomach along with your touch. The emotion in his eyes, mature and stoic in his insult turned as he glimmerd his eyes over to the empty sky, still catching his breath as it flowed in and out from his sneses.

"Hand me my box, please." He cleared the raspiness of his throat while you looked him over in bewilderment. He indicated his head over to where he had kept a small box of cigarettes beside a small pool side table where it had sat by the balcony; he grutned as he eased his head over to the table. "The one that I was nursing before the massive explosion started happening and whatver new inventions they're tyring to come up with."

He was breathing heavily, but he was coming down to something more somber as he kept his eyes over to the box. You turned your head over to it, and gave a small nod as you got yourself upright.

"Of coruse."

Bojack gave a shaky shutter, then turned his head back as he gave a breath of relief.

"Thank you. I appreciate it, really."

Your hands kept gripped beside your arms again as you made your way over to the table, eyes turning over the balcony as you looked over the edge of the balcony while your eyes turned up to the sky; you felt a chill across your skin as your palms gripped across your arms to try and calm yourself. Your eyes turned down to the box while you kneeled down and gripped your hands around it, fingertips gripping across it while you looked over to the sky for a last look of what you had seen and to take in its absence; there was nothing now except for the emptiness, and the pause in the surgance of the fireworks. You still felt something chilling across your senses, your skin and your headspace as you thought over what you had seen, the trialing of the celebration of the pig woman's voice as it had hitched over through the air; the celebration and the energy of hope in her voice that seemed to come from the observation of something beyond understanding. The box kept in your palms as you tapped your fingertips against it for the sake of grounding yourself back to reality from the surrerality of the ominous feeling that had taken to the atmosphere. Your head turned as you looked over to where Bojack looked like a combination of humbly comfortable with his hand on his plush stomach, and the wear of his helpless features as his head kept turned back on the chair, and that same feeling of bittersweet protection came over you. You began to walk back across the balcony again, kneeling yourself down beside him, readjusted to try to get rid of your sudden feeling of shyness, then cleared your throat to get him to readjust his focus onto you.

His eyes opened as he turned and looked over at you with a timid wince, which then turned into a slight present more naive presence of graurtuide as his ears flicked up as he raised himself upward, turning over to the box with grautuide as he raised himself forward.

"Perfect! Yes!" His voice was almost boyish as he reached out for the box and eased it beside his palms, turning it over to the table beside him as he sat himself up. Your lips raised into a ghost of a smile as you placed the box beside the table. "You want Bojack to calm down, give me a cigarette. Makes it a lot easier than the whole emotion processing thing. That's a lot of a waste of time."

A heated satisfaction came over him as he gripped his hand on the box, giving a soft chuckle as he turned down and danced the cigarette between his fingertips. He frowned as he turned his head down to the cigarette as he reached for the small metal lighter beside it, face furrowing into concentration as he lit up the lighter and placed it onto the cigarette. He flicked the box open with another finger and pulled another cigarette out, eyebrows furrowed, lips grimacing slightly as another explosion came after explosion from the fireworks; enough that the almost nature tender grace of his concentration snapped up, one cigereete dandlng from his mouth as he turned his head over to where the fireworks had started up again, eyes turned up as the emotion in his expression snapped up to the fireworks as the neon and red lights began to wash over the buildings again. He gave an abrupt grunt as he pulled the ciggerete dangling in his mouth away from his lip, turning over to the fireworks with an increased hard flair in his eyes.

"It's like this entire goddamn city is dedicated to making sure I feel as guilty as possible for breaking my mother's last photo. Why do people even enjoy spilling out as much senseless noise into the goddamn sky as much as they can? It's like the sky version of a bunch of annoying weed drug addicts being allowed to get a microphone for their self proclaimed deep musings."

Your head turned down, lip raised up as you felt yourself both endeared and at odd's with the stumbling of his cynical exhaustion and judgement; how the softness in his eyes somehow made the terms seemed endearing was beyond you. "They're not for you."

"No, I know." Bojack's eyes lowered as he gave a breath, air becoming settled with something more somber as he eased the tension in his body back downward, slocuhing over in his exhaustion of the conflict that had been drianing him from an inward narrative for the past few hours. "I know they aren't for me. I just-it's hard not to feel like everything is just a reason to feel worse."

"It was a long day." Your voice was rowned out by the fireworks, but Bojack caught on the sentence well enough; he slouched until the plush round of his stomach was easing into his lap as he gave a breath and turned his eyes down to his cigarette and placed it back into his mouth. "After everything you've done for me, the least I can do is try to make something that's a nuance living in this are just a little bit easier."

A soft chuckle left Bojack's lips, somber and defeated while he took a drag of the cigarette through his lip. "I'm sorry. It's not your fault."

"I wouldn't blame you if you felt today and it's mishappens was because of something to do with me."

Bojack's eyes turned up to you, something melancholic and gentle in them as he look at you with an edge of guilt.

"I wouldn't do that. Not intentionally, anyway. After a few stimulants to blow me over, maybe." He blinked at you, adorably, tentatively that suggested weakness. "And that wouldn't be me, anyway."

"Well." You shrugged as you leaned your body beside him, eyes turned down in thought as you rolled your shoulders to try and dissipate the energy of any tension You smiled as you turend your eyes up tp him, bittersweet, exhusted. "The standard isn't very high on either end, away."

"Don't beat yourself up." Bojack's eyes were worn and low, heavy with an emotional shame as he turned his eyes downward while his stout fingertips played with the cigarette. He took another drag, the sensation deepening the wear and the wrinkles on his features, but it was clear that he couldn't have been bothered to worry about it, and there was something endearing and loable about the unconeveitonal of how time had molded him over a period of his life. He turned his eyes back up to you, eyelids lowered and expression dim, but with a wonder of something naive and tender. "People can only be as quality as much as the circumstances they're put in, right? Maybe that's the reason why people are the way they are. Not because of the "some are born with it" shit people come up with."

Your eyes turned down in thought, but your expression turned back up to him as you gave a small nod, genuine relief easing across your features.

"Thank you."

"Don't worry about it." His voice was blunt, detached, much like the emotion in his tone as he turned his eyes back to the cigerrtee that he used to play with his hands. The item seemed as if it was more of an object of distraction than it was something that actually he his interest, and the emotional awkwarness was endearing. The wincing of his exhausted eyes turned back up to the sky as his expression turned over the fireworks.

"I wish messages around here, or anywhere, was more reflective of what actually goes on in the world. But then it wouldn't be as pretty, right? If they were for me, it would be something to those hollywood jerk offs to get the idea of how people like me-how people like you-feel. I would be making some fireworks in the form of a finger for people to get the idea about how terrible they are. The reason why someone like me found you in the first place. Some equally washed up hag who decided it would be entertaining to make fun of me that I used to work with who decided he hated me eventually, because everyone does once they get to know me."

He turned his eyes back to the fireworks, dangling the cigarette lazily in his lips. The noise took over the majority of the space for a moment, the implosion taking over the extension of the balcony, and though the annoyance and the hard look in Bojack's eyes didn't lessen, there was something bittersweet about the impulsive noise; especially with the way it came so soon after the softness of the delcialty that came along with precious appreciation from the pig woman, that lead up and over through the air of the melancholy of Bojack's balcony.

He gave another breath of the cigarette, leeting out nosies that were more awkward than savvy, as he began to lean his plush body back fully against the chair, turning his head back as his eyes closed, and the full wear of that profound molding of someone that came along with a long and hard life eased against the edge of his expression as he leaned his head back. You remembered how you had felt taking him in with his sout and exhausted grace, leaning his body against the railing with a newfound sense of that tired and grated disposition that got so easily triggered; and it wasn;t just the company of the mercy he had put on you that caused you to feel groundeded, more human than you had felt in the longest time you ever had.

"No, you're right. They're probably just doing it to be flashy or pretentious, or they're doing it to celebrate some new piece of shit movie that a Hollywood director decided was ok after months of editing to the point where the damn thing dosen't even mean anything. Not unlike the shit I've had to do just to try and distract myself from the woman that are around me that are so predritable and soulless that it feels like I dated them before I've ever slept with them."

His ears were twitching in their nervous, angered energy as he squinted to the black sky that kept getting polluted by the unnatural colors, the cigarette lazily dancing in his teeth. "So yeah, they should be celebrating my mother's broken photo earlier today in contrast to that. They should be celebrating the fact that the last evidence of her is gone."

You knew he wouldn't be speaking like this in front of you unless he was as crossfaded as he was now. Or maybe he would-he switched between telling people to eat shit if they didn't like what he said and being the most desperate to please man you had ever met. Either way, you felt content, and the ringing of the trailing of the pig woman's celebration, coming from someone who had a trailing of a light of her tone that came along with something profound of a dark heavy handed relief after ages of dark had passed kept echoing behind your senses.

If your relationship was anything so far, though you understood even that was more than you could atturutibe to anything you had ever had, it was recklessly unpredictable, much like the life he led, and even more so the emptiness of your own. On hour before had his hand been in your hair, tongue darting between your lips, neighs and laughter easing against your ears right along with his murmured and low graveleved grunts of how good you felt; he had been drunk by then, but, much like the night before, there had been so much welcome and contentment and richness in his raspy tone that spoke of more depth and allurment than you had ever felt from anyone; the tenderness of his boyishness as he had eased his lip across yours, the charamsa of his conement that had seemed so rich that you hd found it hard to believe it had anything to do with you. Your mind kept going back to the moment before bed, the way he ahd felt like a profoundly melehcolic home as he had eased his body on top of yours, the tenderness of his uncerinity in his eyes, the poke of his teeth, the plush of his body around your torso; the confidence he carried, and the disassociated exhaustion he felt that came along with a boyish and timid uncerinity that led to a narrative profound enough that you couldn't get your hand wrapped around it.

"It wasn't a mistake, was it?"

He turned as he looked over at you in question, eyes winced as he looked you over.

"What was?"

"The inimacty. The way we've been talking."

His ears flicked and turned towards the back of his head in a sign of shame. His eyes turned away, narrowing in an attempt at hiding you knew all too well already.

"You wear your heart on your sleeve, Bojack." You smiled in something between sympathy and bitterness at how clearly conflicted he was within himself at even the idea of continuing the conversation.

Bojack's lips raised into a bitter smile, though there was still that extensive grace that came behind emotional endurance and intelligence as he kept his head turned away just enough for you to take in his emotion. "Add that onto the list of the reasons why I kep fucking and screwing the next thing up, even if what I did wih you was a quick screw and kill." He turned his expression back to you, though evidently he didn't have enough in him to look you in the eyes directly. "Even if this was all just a phase for the emptiness for a couple of days, it wouldn't be your fault. And even if it dosen't feel like it, I promise it's not a loss."

You took a moment as you allowed the richness of how he made you feel sweept over you, and then settled for trying to turn away from the comcplation of someone who made you feel like life was worth living for and yet not enough to numb the pain of being human as you turned down to where your fingertips were nervously patting into the spaces of one another. "It's alright if you were. If I was just another quick get away from whatever it is that you have going on. I've had far worse days, transactions."

Bojack's eyes turned over to the pool in the font of him, and gave a small shrug of his shoulders, eyes complacent and empty as he turned his eyes over the balcony. "I can be miserable, sure. But I shouldn't be so miserable to the point where it affects you."

He turned over to you as you raised your eyes up on instinct at his words, eyes once again traced in so many broken depths of fractured emotions. It was the richest expression you had ever seen, not because he knew who he was or what he was doing, but rather because of his intelligent self-awareness that so many ran away from. There was so much pain in there that you could have gotten lost in-an authentic human defeat.

"You know, alternatively, you don't have to stay if you don't want to. I shouldn't show you my pain. I shouldn't show you any of this. I don't want you to see it, not anymore than you want to see it. Or should want to."

You laughed, the action on instinct, and Bojack turned his eyes back to you with his brows raised up as he looked you over, and with a teasing of his expression and vauge tender bewilderment did he look you over.

"I hit a punchline naturally that hard, did i?"

"I just-you have no idea how wrong you are."

"Oh." Something akin to tender shock eased across Bojack's features as he looked you over, eyes turning across yoru body as his ears lowered as he gazed at you in curisotry and something that looked not unlike a child trying to step his way catioulsly through something that had hurt him. He paused as something changed in his eyes, something guarded, as if a sharp reminder of something he wanted to fall into, but failed to."You might think that now, but-first impressions don't capture the long turn way of things, do they?"

"I don't know." Your eyes turned down as you kept by yours hands. "I feel like everything I do, especially on my own, is just an exhausted reflection of everything I've tried before, except less futile, and most would afree. I'm not sure I care anymore, other than whatever it is that feels true to me in the moment." Your eyes turned back up as you met his, somber and reflexive. "And what I've been sharing these past few days has been what I've felt. I think I deserve to at the very least feel that."

"Yeah." Bojack's eyes turned down, ears lowered. "Yeah."

You opened your mouth to speak more, the heaviness of his bloated cheeks and aged eyes pathetic, but utterly soft and inspiring you to want to speak more. You wanted to stumble and trip over yourself at how entrapped you were by him, but you knew one of the two things was most likely to happen; he would either take it as a joke, or he wouldn't be able to accept it. Worse, he would get scared and push you away entirely; and any other possibility was one that you knew was better left for something not thought about but simply experienced.

"It's ok to feel bad." The simple statement was all you could manage in your own infatuated bewilderment. His eyes turned back to you, stout and adorable, ears perked up as his eyes turned over your body in that boyish question.

"Yeah?"

"God knows that the only way I've made it this far was seeing my pain and trauma as a companion, a teacher, something that knew and understood how I was and what I was going through, rather than something to be a sign of giving up. So-if you don't like these past few hours, just know that it's always changing anyway, and that there will be new lessons to learn tomorrow-and, anyway." Your eyes met his again as you gave him that bittersweet raise of your lp. "I've loved being with you and experiencing this with you, and I feel stronger for it. I know that probably won't carry you very much in the long run, but you did make one life better for a little while. Maybe hope is futile, I don't know."

Bojack sighed, in a tender and considerate way as he gave a soft chuckle, eyes turned down in consideration. "I wish I could say thank you. But having a heart in places like this is the equivalent to keeping a place for people to activate a bomb on your arm at all times. Because most hearts aren't clean or pretty or polished. They're disgusting and messy and look like-" He waved up his hand towards his white shirt. "My shirt. My shirt that hides my plush stomach and lazy posture, wrapped in my slumpy robe that I'm pretty sure hadn't been washed in two days." He turned over towards you, eyes lowering again in a complication of both self acceptance and defeat."This. This is what you get."

"I don't see anything wrong with what I'm looking at."

Bojack rolled his eyes up to the sky, though the emptiness in his expression was made more of an extension of something profound and compact in his thought than it was of something of only the bleak nature of cynical.. "Jesus."

"I do mean it. And I know its hard not to be cynical and to feel like the repeats of human life isn't enough because it's been done so many times before-but I promise you it is. It's just a matter of finding your own specific caring of relief for a little while-and I can promise you I've found mine, more than I ever did before. I know that' not saying much coming from me."

"Don't put yourself out like that." Bojack's eyes lowered as his expression dimmed as he looked you over. His voice was somber, dignified, and oddly full of grief. "Not for while I'm trying to process my own stumbling weird actions, anyway."

Bojack blinked, as if he wasn't quite sure how to respond to such an authentic statement. He turned his head back over to the fireworks, the implosions just as loud as they had been-but for now, the both of you had adjusted to the loud implosion of the noise. You noticed his fingers were looser now around the cigarette; as if he was losing any focus on pretending he wasn't drawn to you.

"Next time you catch me passed out on the floor and doing drugs, you can just slap me. Rather than the-kissing and talking to me part. Probably more than what I deserve from doing that."

His voice full of that usual chilling detachment toward his health, or even if he lived or died, that he always did, and it was both chilling and alluring at once. His mascliuine, low and raspy tone seemed as if it was full as much self-awareness as it was self loathing that it was almost whimsically fascinating.

You shook your head, still with that complicated somber look across your expression. "It's incredible."

"What?"

"That you can see yourself clearly enough to know who you are, but not enough to know how wonderful you are." You readjusted, pulling yourself closer to him as your eyes locked against his body, even as he pulled his expression away from you for a moment while his eyes turned back to the windows. "I haven't felt something so enlightening, an emotional path that seems like its so perfectly drawn to something that feels beyond this earth."

"C'mon."

"I haven;t felt something that I've ever been so connected to in my life; everything I've ever had has just bene a foggy muddle of something not real or something I wish was something more than just muddled tolerance of lack of remarkable, and I thought it was just me. There was nothing I had to offer myself to have anything other than muddled distractions and disconnect until I died-there was nothing remarkable about myself or life that I felt connected to. But I don't feel that way right now. Right now, I feel confident; at ease, but also more cut through the fog of life and can clearly feel who I am and what I'm meant for-a quiet, rich and enduing theme."

"Maybe it is." His brawny shoulders managed a shrug as his eyes stayed depleted, exhausted as he turned his expression over the balcony. "Maybe it's both of us." He cleared his throat awkwardly as he winced. "The bad part of feeling unable to have the connection, I mean."

He could have been such a golden man, if it wasn't for the fact that it was buried under so many layers of that self-loathing that followed him no matter what he spoke.

"Don't take my words the wrong way. Bojack. I wouldn't change anything about you. I love how authentic and unapologetic you are. Your pain is beautiful."

Bojack shook his head, disgust crossing his features. "God, no-"

"Not because you deserve it," you added quickly. "But if that's what makes you you-"

"I wouldn't be me if I could be anything else."

You tapped your fingertips against the railing. "Well, I can't help but love you for it."

"Love?" He turned his eyes over to you again, spekical nature in his eyes, but something in there was an inquir of something lighter, not unlike the richness of what had cross the both of you from the women's outcry of an odd celebration; and the air held that richness of conetrtion tht came from quality and profound meaning where there was only emptiness and punishment on the other side of being able to be failed to meet it. "Your naivety is cute, but almost stupid if you attribute the past forty eight horus to love."

"Appreciae. I appreciate this time I've had with you more than I can say, Bojack."

You felt your heart lurch in your throat. Your blood was rushing as you waited for him to respond. But there was no response; just him dancing his cigarette between his teeth as he looked outward in a pondering expression.

You took his lack of answer to your question as all you needed to know.

"You don't mean that." His voice was detached, distant. "You don't even know me. I've heard this before."

"Bojack-"

He turned his eyes to you. They were hardened, distant, more stern than you had ever seen them before.

"You don't love me. You don't even know me. The same way that no one knows anyone, and when they do, there's just more questions about what the point of it even is when life makes even less sense. So, no, I'm not going to entertain this outside of whatever slurring drunk idiocy comes out of me. I'm sorry."

You felt yourself shrink back, and your fingertips threaded across the pale spaces of your hand. There were times when Bojack seemed almost dangerous in the past few days of his up and down intense reaction, his over the top reaction to something as small ans minute as the photograph of his mother being turned over being one-there was a certain hidden violence in those black depths of self loathing. For the time being, it seemed like that line had been crossed, and any exploration had reached its end for the time being, though whether or not you would bother again only depended on if that divination he had inside of him that came from a welcoming and loving, boyish manly air only he held of a life melded for your invitation would continue to be present or not.

"I'm sorry."

Bojack took a drag from his cigarette, closing his eyes as the smoke surrounded his snout. You were so drawn to his air of a soft body, complemented by his troubled humanity. Whether it made sense or was a quality way of approaching him or not, or even weather it lead anywhere int he comptienss of the indfiferenace satagnce of life, you were infuriated by that inherent fractured broken wisdom that only got occasional moments to breathe when he allowed it. By that laddish air that was perfectly executed by his brawny voice that made everything sound comforting, authentic, interesting.

But God, you were so afraid of what was hiding under those secret layers that smelled of human decay and years of being robbed of what any person would have needed to stay sane.

"You're young. You'll learn. Love is bullshit. I mean-human connection is just…it's more imagiend and desperate most of the time, while everything passes by in their tolerance, stagance, abuse or mundanity. That profound, instant connection of richness-" He paused as his pupils turned over the pool in thought. "It doesn't exist. Neither does happiness. It's not necessarily-pepemittism. Just reality. And I'm sure that if you hadn't lived as hard of a life as much as you have now, then you would be at a point where you would think so, too, if it weren't for the fact that you were robbed of event he trashiest decency up until now-which leads back to my exact point."

You pressed your hand against the side of the pool table beside his chair. You didn't want to interrupt him. You didn't want to change him. You knew he experienced that enough as it was.

"It does in small quantities. People can experience it temporarily, sure. But you end up alone. Alone is the default."

You didn't feel upset at his words. They almost seemed like words of caution, but there was something about the way they were spoken that seemed like they were laced in a natural innocence that Bojack held that he couldn't do anything about.

"Someone loves you. Or they think they do. They love the version of you they made to make the both of you happy for a little while, because everyone wants everyone to be happy. Even though most people are terrible at it, and people make mistakes that leads to isolation and groteusue judgeemnt. You don't feel like a loser for a little while. Then something happens-usually me. They leave. You have to get used to yourself again. Alone is-" He chuckled, bitterly. "Alone is complex and terrifying, but it's all there is."

You said nothing. Bojack turned his head to you, lights tracing his features.

"If I'm getting too negative, you can leave. But I'm tired of apologizing for things just because people won't accept what's true."

You cleared your throat, lightly, then turned your eyes back to your fingers again.

"No."

'You sure? Because this is just the prologue of what I wake up to before I even get out of bed; a variation of what I what countless people say daily depsi my best efforts to not be like that. And-time and time and over and over again, it ended up being true."

You turned your eyes to him, allowing a small smile. It was shy, uncertain, wounded-but it was there, and you could see from the soft glint in Bojack's eyes that he had picked up on it. "I'm not talking out of my ass when I say I like what you are, Bojack. Even if I haven't seen all of you yet."

Bojack chucked, awkwardly, his eyes turning over to you in something that was timid and uncertain. "You want me to keep digging around in that ass to see what else comes out?"

'I'm glad I'm getting a sense of the kind of humor you use when you won't face what's going on."

"And I'm glad I found someone who tolerates it. For now, at least."

Your lips raised up as the emotion met your eyes. "For now. For as long as you'll have me."

Bojack hesitiated, and a heaviness and apology entered his eyes. He paused as he readjusted on the chair, taking the second cigarette that had been placed lazily between his fingertips, then leaned forward and offered you the cigarette. He took your hand as he took your palm and placed it across his, grunting as he placed the cigarette stick between your fingertips.

"Here. I may be two steps away from kicking out any goody two shoes from this place at any given moment, but I shouldn't drown you in my bitterness without letting you get faded too."

You didn't refuse; the taste of his alcohol stained lips, mixed in with a feel of burly strength of someone with the natural stout weight he had and the plush adorabiltiy of his body and the vague smell of whiskey and human film of sweat from someone who was more emotionally labored last night than he had admitted, was one you had been missing and wanting to know more since you had met him.

"There you go, baby."

The petname sounded odd on the rasp of his tone that suggested someone who was far used to only emotional detachment and amptiness; and he pasued as a gave hitch as he realzied the word had slid out of his mouth before he ahd stopped it.

"Oh. Uhm." His eyes winced the naivety of someone inexperienced with emotion and an apology eased aross his features as his ears lowered while he looked you over, and his hands slid away from where he had placed his palm in yours. "I'm sorry. The moment just-"

"It's ok. I won't mention it again."

Your hand came to ease across the cigarette, and you gave a raise of your lip of thanks as you turend it back to your mouth, taking a drag, and feeling the sweetness of the same taste of his lovable whiskey and cigarette stained taste on the edge of the cigarette as you placed it on your mouth.

You took a drag, the smoke bellowing with a trial out of your lips, and the almost devestatingly tender and lovable apology of Bojack's expression raised into a small raise of his lip awkwardly, teeth poked as he looked up at you, a lighting gratuite lighting against his eyes.

"Thank you, Bojack."

You allowed the pet name, seemingly especially attractive spoken in his virile voice, to land on your ears without acknowledgement. Whatever the both of you were, it certainly wasn't something that needed to be defined. To define something with a person as troubled and uncertain as much as Bojack was was only asking for more questions than answers.

"Don't mention it." His eyes lowered, dim and distant as his ears lowered down and back over to the reflective pool that surrounded the balcony. He shrugged, sullenly, his empty eyes turned over to the pool. "You might that this is a favor from my end, but believe me, at my age I don't worry about taking anyone in with me unless it's something that can benefit me too."

"Well," Your eyes turned down as you looked down at the cigarette he had placed between your fingertips, and with your fingertips trailing against the stick did you bring it to your mouth, leaning forward as you placed the stick inside of your lips again and allowed yourself to take a drag. "At least we're both on the same page of how much this benefitted the two of us, for tonight."

"At least." His voice was somber now, just as his eyes with that emotionally maturity and the depth of someone boyishly lost and yet compelling.

The cigarette semed to be burning out; there was nothing but dim dusk of something brown and black against the end of the stick as you kept it tangled between your fingertips. Your eyes tured over to the lighter where Bojack had sullenly placed it beside the poolside deck table, and your hand reached forward as you threaded your hands against the side of the lighter, turning it to your chest as you snapped your fingertip against it. The flame enlightened, and you were just about to tilt it to the side of the cigaerrete sitfck, the implosion of the fireworks started again. Your focus lost its balance as you felt the stick tumble across your fingertips and the flame abruptly burn across the side of your fingertip, and you left out a scream and a swear loud enough that it was drowned out by the fireworks.

"What? What?" The mediation of the emptiness of Bojack's eyes abruptly widened, ears splayed as he snapped his body forward, body tense as his eyes bulged while he snapped his eyes over to you, panic gleaming in them as he watched you snap your head over to where the implosion of the fireworks increased. The annoyance of Bojack's eyes increased as he snapped his head up to where the noise and implosion had increased again, and he stood himself firmly upright, turning his body to the side of the deck chair as he reached out his hands and threaded them across your hands while his hardened eyes flew down to your palms.

"Goddammit. Perfect timing. You would think they were trying to make this as embarrassing for me tonight as possible."

You took a breath as you tried to reset as the rest of the sudden slew of the fireworks began to decrease, allowing his fingers to tremble on the cigarette as it tangled between your burned fingertip.

"Probably they'll keep doing it for as long as they can. Until someone decides to call in."

Your breath was still shaking, your palms sweating as you turned your eyes down to where he kept his winced eyes exclaimed across your fingertip; there was a certain insult as he looked it over that felt almost protective, something that could have be guised as loving. But you tried to come across as a comment that was causal as you spoke; "Would that be you?"

Bojack shrugged, eyes lowered as his expression emptined, though there was a new bright light in his eyes that came along with that protective heat across his eyes. His expression flickered back over to the fireworks, ones of which were now starting to dispsiate into the sky.

"If I had a night with nothing better to do. If I thought they would listen. If I wanted to be able to waste my breath on it, maybe." His kept his fingertips eased across the one fingertip that had been burned and blacked to the point where it was the origin of your hands trembling, and he winced in some intense emotion that seemed personally painful as he looked it over. The fire in his eyes kept present but he guided his fingertip across the tip of your finger as he tried to keep some fire subdued. "Looks like it got you good. I can take it under the sink, if you want."

"I barely hurts, actually." Your shoulders rolled as Bojack's eyes turned back up to you, his own expression sotitc and tense, the concern in his eyes deepened as he threaded his fingertips across your hand, ghosting his fingertip across the tip of your finger to check for a reaction. You barely felt it; if anything, the stoic, tender warmth of the sense of home he gave you was something that felt more like confirmation and relief of where there would otherwise be another labor on your body of what you had to take care of on your own.

"We have maybe five minutes until the truckload of loud babies starts their toys again. Typical day." His ears perked as he leaned back away from you a bit, his hands starting to loosen across your hand as he looked you over. "Do you want any help finishing the thing off?"

Your eyes fluttered up to his, and with a small raise of you lip did the humanity increase on that bittersweet balcony of melcohony, and you caught the soft surprise in his eyes that came from being touched with your expression where there was a hint of that profound compelling depthful partner that guided into his expression.

"If you'd like, I'll ever say no."

"Really?" A slight teasing boyishness turned his eyebrows down into something teasing as his lip rasied up with a slight cocky teasing. "Never?"

"Definitely not. This is the most easy thing I have ever felt-maybe the only time things have ever felt easy at all. I didn't even think it was possible."

Bojack turned his eyes back over to the cigarette that you hd clumsily placed onto the poolside table, his dim and heavily lidded eyes troubled and turning his stout fingertips onto the cigarette as he placed it between his fingers, then turned and refocused on placing the fingertip between the spaces of your hands.

"One thing that I try to tell myself whenever I feel like things are too easy-which, in my case, is mainly just when I'm drunk with no worries as to whether anyone is watching me or getting affected but it or not-"

"Honest."

"Honest." He paused as he kept his focus on easing the cigarette into your hands, seeming to detach himself from looking into your eyes as he kept the focus on the cigarette in your fingertips, your own hands starting to lessen into something more stable but still shaken from the burning of the cigarette. You tired to take charge again as you got some control over your hands again, turning the stick to your lip as you tired to calm the hot flashes and the still trembling from the panic as Bojack finally managed to raise his eyes to where you pulled the stck forward to your lips, his chubby hands endowed against your palms lovingly and getnlty, ears flicked back as his eyes kept on you with a tender kind of adorable worry. "There's the idea that the only reason why anyone ever made things complicated was because of their own issues, which they then decided to project onto you and make your problem. It gets exhausting, always having to turn over in your head as to who's right and what's right and what belief or perspective or true or not. After a certain point, you just want to let go.

You smiled as you closed your eyes and allowed the smoke to leave your lips as you took a drag of it, the smoke trialing out of your mouth, Bojack's palms trialing and cradling your chin as he watched you with worry and a tender shyness, teeth poked, the fog trailing into the cold air as the shard wind pressed on your face and bellowed through the course hair of Bojack's mane.

"You look wonderful." Your eyes slowly opened as you heard the soft suggestion of uncerintiy from Bojack's tone, and slowly ddi your eyes open to see the graceful, experience emotional attempt of intimacy between you. Clumsy as Bojack could be with what seemed like a terrifying emotional challenge of intimacy, there was an odd natural confidence that followd him that came from the experiences he ahd previously, an the result was something incredibly endearing and charming that caused you to feel both protected and under an emotional intimaton at the same time. Bojack's bottom eyes winced, and he cleared his throat as he sat himself back up.

"Don't let anyone take away whatever it is that's made you-" He indicated to you tentatively, eyes rolling up to the sky in thought- "As in, the woman that's sitting in front of me tonight. Whatever made..her. The only thing that comes out of being abused is that you still stay yourself, you just become the more dysfunctional version of yourself. So-" He eased himself upward, ears pekred up as he watched you while his chubby hands began to release you from his tender grasp entirely, eyes turning against you as he looked you over, innocent and helpless, compelling and gentle and tenderly laden in how he was, stout hands coming to ease by his chest, and then gave an awkward shrug. "You know."

You opened up your eyes now fully as you continued to bellow the smoke out of your lips, this time your own turn for a cocky teasing heat in your eyes as you titled your head and watched him with something both cofmroting and challenge, and you could see his pupils darting ucneirntly.

"You know this from experience?"

"Well-" Bojakc winced as he rubbed his shoulder, looking down. "That's a-"

Another explosion of onslaught fireworks polluted and echoed in the sky. Bojack's ears flew all the way back as his hard eyes darted to the sky again, and this time the flare in his expression increased to the point where he abutply raised himself upward, raising a first and showing his age through his abrupt impatience as he snapped his eyes over to the fireworks.

"You know I can always change my mind about trying to stick whatever power I have into you and your toys, assholes?"

You laughed lightly again, turning your head down as you kept the cigarette traield against your fingers; you were still trembling, but something about his presence was keeping you more grounded and calm than you had ever been in far les challenging siautions.

Bojack gave a multuile of a string of grumbles that spewed out of his lip as he mumbled under his breath, and you kept your eyes down to the floor, amused and you laughed to yourself, gazing at the humble softness that suggested a anturaly humble homeliness and an incredible tender heart.

"I need to look up how much longer they're doing something like this."

"Or what?" You turned your head up, looking across Bojack's expression, which became less comically angry and more detached and somber as he eased himself down onto the chair.

'I'm just saying that if they keep this up, I'd rather take you somewhere tonight where you can get a good night's sleep." His eyes turned downward, vulnerable, tired as he gave a shrug. "And, you know, to make sure that you can have at least some reason to have something decent happen to you before you get thrown back out into those streets of God knows whoever the hell assholes that you've been putting up with up there. You should at least have someplace to rest for the night before I turn you back out on your own. I know I can't help or change anything, but-" That somber apology eased into his eyes as he turned his eyes back down to the ground, and another small shrug met his shoulders.

You nodded in a small and reflective fashion, fingertip eased across the cheap paper of your stick as you kept your eyes turned down. "You are something else, Bojack. I try to be humble and forgiving to the shortcomings of others, because it would only lead to my own suffering, and it's all apart of being human-but I feel like even just a moment with you would make me richer than far longer time with someone else."

The smoke left your lips as it spilled out of your mouth while you spoke, and for a moment the cheapness that inhabited that balcony and the house that came from lack of emotional intimacy throughout the years of his life, and just as unremakrability remembered by those who passed by and experienced it who were drawn only to what feed their human needs, of which the emptiness of Bojack's house had very little.

Your eyes turned up again, attempting to meet into the emptiness of the heavily lidded emptiness of his eyes. "Thank you."

He looked boyish again, and managed another small shrug. "Yeah, well-" He took a raspy breath, heavy and conflicted. "That feeling won't last long."

He leaned forward to where you were smoking, and his stout hands eased forward to where you were nursing the cigarette, his eyes turning up to you in a needy question; his own cigarette had fallen into the water by the pool in the middle of the chaos. You smiled as you took a last drag of the cigarette, then pulled the cigarette away from your mouth as a small boyish smile raised onto his lip and gave a lighter glimmer in his eyes, pressing it back against his own lips as he took another drag, though the gentle way he took it while one palm cradled the bottom of your chin made you feel a shiver ease through your body as you gave a shaky breath.

"No matter what happens out there, just remember what I told you tonight. I know it's not worth much, but I can't imagine how little you get to hear from people out there."

You laughed, the bitterness in your voice more present than it was before.

"You can't imagine."

A vague hurt snapped into his eyes at your words; the vulenrbaility of how truly hard it was inspsining something in him as he turned his eyes, tender and bulged from the wear of his age, turned and met your expression. There was a certain ourtity in his eyes that you couldn't have imagined even on your most inner rich imagiaitnve days for a shred of relief.

"Exactly. Not everyone can go even one day or do one thing without other people following them. You need to know how special it is that you've made it this far. If I can see that, the biggest attention needing guy you'll ever meet, I know you can feel it. I need you to keep that in mind when you're out there."

"Why can't it-" You paused as you readjusted your body, clearing your throat, and those troubled, tormented eyes with that tender heart that was wrapped and corrupted under complication turned up to you, and it inspired something inside of you beyond complacency and embreasement. "Why can't I stay here? For a night? Is that-" Your eyes searched Bojack as the clumsy, worn and lovable look of his eyes turned back down to the cigarette as he took a drag of it, hint of tension eased across his expression as you pushed him as much as your felt you had the nerve to. "Is that something that could work for a little while, if neither of us especially know what to do for the time being?"

"I'll disappoint you. That's why it's easier for us to smash and trash and for me to forget like you ever existed after." He took a drag that seemd like a statement this time, blowing out the smoke as his dry eyes turned back up to you, eyebrow raised as he looked you over. He shrugged, eyes darted to the side in something avoidant and vaguely devastated, but only as much as he allowed himself to believe it. "That's the easiest and bluntest way to put it."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I'm fifty. You get around. You start seeing the same patterns in people over and over until it all becomes dull and predictable. In yourself, and others. I know me. I knew my last girlfriend before she even left me. I knew why she loved me, anyway. I cared about her, but she couldn't love me."

You hesitated. The cigarette had given you a slight teasing of the way his lips tasted; brawny and permanently tasting of whiskey, but they could never stimulate that impossible softness of his lip that held a profound maturity and need for being held and holding in kind that came with feeling the touch of his mouth on yours.

"You don't have to be ashamed." Your hands felt useless and detached from what you wanted to be their true purpose; to press your hand against the side of his back, to feel the soft radiated warmth from his plush body. Bojack was a walking contradiction; for all his words of lackluster approval for anything human in life, you knew him well enough to know what would happen if you did touch him. True to his own desperate fashion of contradicting the humanity of someone who was desperate for love but also detested it, he would melt against the side of your hand in mere minutes. But you wouldn't dare disrespect him; not because the softness of his air would punish you for it, but because there was a genuine need and want to respect him for the sake of it, from something that came along with the want to love for the sake of loving.

Perhaps that was the reason why you didn't. To give him even just the softest bit of invitation of what he was so desperate for almost felt like a certain kind of back-handed paving for what he wanted, at least as much as you could discern, but by what you weren't sure he could handle. In asense, you weren't sure you could handle it; the feeling of ebing around him in that niche profound way of a dressing up of existence hat held bittersweetness, pain, melancholy, joy was so choking for you that you could barely stand to even be near the way you naturally read his air, and for once did you begin to understand what the concept of a soul was.

The fact that he had spent the majority of his life, if not the entirety of his life, longing for that simple presence of something as common as water for most in the privileged life he lived in and of itself was hard to wrap around; people had found far richer with far less. If you were to give it to him right away, it almost seemed insulting to someone that was so rich in his raw pain. One thing you knew for sure; you would either love him right, or not at all. You would love him with the best you had to give; if there was any chance for it at all.

Bojack's eyes were stoic, empty with a maturity in them that suggested that the respect you felt for him wasn't just for your end of things. He gave another raspy chuckle as he traced his fingers against the cheap and almost entirely now won paper as his eyebrows wigged into something more teasing as he turned his eyes back over to the balcony, indicating his eyes to it with something that was at least attempting to be playful.

"Do you think if I get drunk enough tonight, I'll be able to sleep through this noise tonight without having to concern myself with people I know are empty directly? It's bad enough I have to see their aforementioned actions."

The question was asked with a chaotic nature-you raised up your eyes as you looked at his teasing, boyish expression-how someone could be the heaviest person you had ever seen, cynical and turn onto the world's old black tide of a direction and yet playful was beyond you.

"Only if I get one to join you."

He then shrugged and gave a laugh; raspy, a tone that should have been hard, but there was something so soft in his spirit that was so tender despite that teasing that something told you not even a lifetime of torment could or had taken it away. His round stomach poked through his hips, arms leaned back, eyes chamrastic and sharp, eyelids heavy, a alluring contradiction of something that made an alluring turn for every balance of something profoundly and beautiful molded.

"You don't even need to answer that question, I already know the answer. I could thrown a few glasses or even furitnite over the metal rod tonight if I wanted to just to show those guys up out there so that you can get a good night's sleep. They'll publish somehtin in the morning more focused on making fun of another assholes doing something crazy and impulsive than they ever will the fireworks, and nothing destroys people quicker than lack of attention." He indicated his cigarette lazily to you. "Like I said for you. Everything is a virtue. Anything that keeps you going. I promise"

"How do you know that?"

"Due to the fact that I've thrown countless shit over the side of this balcony countless times and the only thing I ever got out of it was that raging bitch down the street asking me what I was even doing. I wish I had a direct answer for her. At least I have a direct reason tonight"

His ears flickered as amusement glinted in his eyes, a compliment to the excited dancing of emotion in his eyes, ears flicked and showing off the tracing of his conflicted emotions against the movement of his delicate ears. Your knees could have buckled at the estranged innocence that traced his disposition without even meaning to; the attraction of the confnedece of someone who naturally understood people in his emotional intleligence, the savviness of what he carried-the boyish humbleness he carried.

"Nothing beats like real life experience. One of the reasons why I don't bother with television. Watching it, I mean. Also attributed to the fact that I would rather be watching the things where I was there to remember the thing called raw life experience."

"And that's why you've thrown things off the balcony to spite people in the past?"

"Yes. Literally. I'd rather get drunk, look at the ceiling, and learn things from my own thought and experience than the foggy brained people in most entertainment-which, by the way, I've et, and they did not greet me the way they should for someone technically longer in the business than them."

"Even without participating?"

"Surviving around here is like participating. You keep your head down and if someone doesn't destroy you beyond recollection, that's good enough." His ears lowered, soft and considerate. "I mean, you would know about that and you're not even in it. Maybe it's just a life thing."

A particularly large gust of wind blew against the side of the black spilt ends of his mane that rested on his forehead and spilled down his neck like paint of the midnight sky. His face took a moment of serenity- within it was the handsome modest humanity of him that was so innocent in his heavied self awareness of it that it didn't deny from how you wondered how anybody who felt even remotely the same human desire to connect with him to resist from touching him, pressing against his soft middle, of hearing his rapsy sweet nothings in your ear. It was a feeling that inherently warped inside of what he was, whether he admitted it or not. As chaotic as back and forth as it was, there was so much good in him-and for once, you felt the difference between a life with meaning, no matter how flawed, and the cheap tolerant survival you had had previously.

"It feels good. Throwing things. For the moment you're throwing it over the edge, you feel free. Unchained. Like you're letting go of something inside of you."

"That's how it feels being around here. In this house, I mean" The words didn't reveal enough to put Bojack on one of his tangents, but enough to speak your appreciation.

"Good." His head leaned forward and met your eyes again, all the earnesty in it, even with the hint behind his eyes that he didn't know if he could offer you a place to stay. "That's incredible. Usually it's hard just to even tolerate someone coming over."

"Why?"

"I don't know. It might just be a fifty thing, but it's like I said. People just feel like reparations of everyone you've emt before, or they're flawed to the point where they make your life, harder, or they bring their own baggage to take down what you thought you had tried to at least somewhat find youe own peace with for a little while. I'm too expereinced. I haven't enjoyed someone elses' company in-" His head turned, eyes empty, eyelids lowered as he shrugged, a sigh, eyes turned up to the sky over his large grey walls. "A long time. Feeling connected to the few people you met is like-nothing else. But it laves you with more issues than you had until you just don't care about being apart of it anymore. You just cradle yourself until you.."

He voice trailed, stoic and melheolcic, and he turned his head over to you as his dry eyes realized you were sitting with your eyes on the ground, unclear if you were listening or not.

His head lowered. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be dumping this on you." He raised himself up, giving a grunt as he winced while he sat himself upright, plush round stomach turning on his thighs as he turned the mostly worn cigarette and stubbed it out with a soft breath. "I'm too old for this."

"I'm fine."

"And I shouldn't have broken that photo. I shouldn't have done..any of this lately." His hand pressed through the chopped mane of his hair. "I'm getting into my head again thinking weird decisions will make anything better."

"You're doing the best you could."

His eyes flicked up to you, defensive, vague pout on his lip. "Am I?"

"I don't see why you're not."

"And what would be the quality of worth of that if it all ends terribly anyway?"

You grazed your hands against the side of the poolside table tope beside you, feeling the cold metal as it greeted your hands. The closest thing you would get to being able to touch him tonight-and that was both a feeling that felt fair, and filled you with a suffocation that had an edge of beauty to it where normally there would only be pain, of depth rather than emptiness, if only because it concerned hi-and profound and rich focus of something no amount of living for your own survival and esteem cold give you; nothing compared to the beauty of being attracted to, lost in, of living for another; a truth that was a celebration for some, an devastation for most.

"Most of the troubles for people who have their needs met is about their character. I think you're doing incredible."

It wasn't that you didn't touch him because you didn't want to, or even necessarily because you thought he wouldn't let you-but rather because you wanted to give him what he deserved. As it was, he was so conflicted that it seemed as if he himself didn't know what that was.

"Yeah, and teenage horror flick movies are worth everyone's time. Are we stating things where we say things that aren't true? Because I got plenty. How many more times can I say that I don't do the best of anything? What does the best even mean? When has that ever done anyone any good?"

He nudged his way further towards the edge of the chair until his elbows met his knees, though whether it was because he was drawing himself to you, or losing that bit of control he had in himself as best as he could, you couldn't tell. You didn't care as the blurriness of good or bad experiences into the blurred understanding of what truly mattered; depth.

He closed his eyes, muscles on his face tense, and there was an admirable concern on his face that spoke of someone enduring their pain, rather than turning it outward to impusslive deciossn to make others suffering; a surprsining end of someone who carried their pain for the sake of others, whether celebrated or even recongizned or not.

"Anywa. I, uh-" His eyes closed, cheks bloated from age, and his eyes closed as he eased his fingertips forward and pressed it by his tired eyelids, voice somber. "You can stay for the night. In the morning, I'll make sure to drop you off somewhere safe."

"Bojack-no." You got yourself up without knowing how it would change the churning of his headspace. He turned his eyes towards you in a small and curious way, pure and exhausted.

"What are we doing?"

You starighted yourself upward, rolling your shoulders, feeling the heat ease across you that came from indecision. "I'm here because I care about you. And I'd like to stay. And I know I want you to want me to. Am I allowed to say that much?"

His eyes turned as he looked you over, that unreaadable uncertain timid purity in his features causing the stretching of those long and empty afternoons to reveal the empintess of the cotradcation of someone profound and tender underneath what he had stayed with in terms fo idneintiy and energy, as reality was with all things; endless in its lack of giving the cliche predictions of what people wanted, especially hen it came to people; especially when it came to what was in front of you now, someone who you felt you could love deeply and rpeditavbly in the msot warm and fulfilling fashion, and yet never know, such as yourself, and such as wit humanity.

"Yes."

He said the words with a stumbling hestaintece, but it war clear it came from lack of comfort of the emotional intimacy it entailed. "But why would you want to.

You thought it over. He deserved, at the very least, an authentic answer. There was something about him that was quite literally an alluring sense of mature humanity to the way that he was- belonging to everything he did and said, at least for the superficial navigation that carried everyone and not the constant changing murky underneath. You wanted to match that as much as you could.

"You didn't mean to smash the photo of your mother." Your empty hand pressed against the soft white dress over your pale body; even just the way he had suggested it and put it on you felt like an endowed attempt at love. "And I'm sure there's a way that we can salvage it. Maybe I could stick around for that-for a day or two. What is that in the grand scheme of everything."

"What?" He almost glared at you, but it was more of a complciared defnes einside of him, and you could have sworn you felt the tenderness he felt for you. "No."

"Why?"

"I'm glad that I did. Better than the other alternative."

"Which is?"

"The part where I have to look at her for the rest of my life and be reminded-" He cut himself off, pressing his hands against the side of his cheek as he scratched incessantly. "It doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter that she's not here and it doesn't matter that that photo wasn't here anymore, either."

"And I-"

"That family isn't here. I'll always remember what she looked like. The last face I want to remember. None of it ever really mattered." He turned towards you,giving a slight nervous, if a bit crazed, chuckle. "I'm all about not bothering to cling onto things anymore. That's my thing now." His voice cracked, lowered. " It always has been, really."

Your hands gripped onto your arms, and you breathed in.

"No, Bojack. You are like a insecure and lost, precious thing who couldn't lost his preciousness even if you tried."

Bojack turned his eyes away from you, the glare increasing into something less personal, harder.

"You can't come around here and starting playing guessing games about some comfort you wish was ture just because some kind stranger took you in. And I would like to emphasize-" He turned to you as he waved a pointed finger in a circle, and then directly settled to pointing on you. "Stranger."

"Are we?"

He shrugged, timidly.

"Logically. Yes."

You paused as your eyes turned down to your hands, playing with the nervous pattering of your fingertips as you tried to readjust your nerves and the chaos of your foggy mind, the odd ache of the desperation that you had for want of trying to decide if you wanted to push on the brink of where you could feel something especially human and enriching if you pushed; the problem was that you had to push.

"We're both here, anyway."

Bojack laughed again, quietly, turning his body to the balcony as he made his way over to the edge of it, the cigarette he had taken from you dangling in his fingers as he began to walk his way over to it again.

"Are we?"

"I think so." You turned as you heard Bojack give another drag of his cigarette while his ears flicked back, leaning his stout body across the metal balcony as he turned his head forward, the emotional layerd decrepacny that came along with whatever way he felt alone only adding to the layer of his confliction. You paused as you sighed and rolled your shoulders, beginning to walk yourself upright, keeping your hands by your arms while you turned to watch the stout form of his lovable form and the conflict of his air.

He was so tall- and for somebody that was so clearly only present a way that was tangible it was almost in a physical sense that came along with such profound inner confliction and heaviness, you had never felt a presence that seemed so clear, so demeaning in the way it brought something so human out of you where there was only heaviness and shame that came along with barley amanging to say alive. There was something enduring, consistent about it.

"I've never had anyone come along and say even half of the amount that you have." His voice was rasped, cracked as he turned his head to the side, ears flicked as he kept the stick between his fingertips, rolling it around the spaces of his had. His tone was cracked, rasped, reflective in exhaustion. "I'm not sure if I should."

"Why not?" Though you felt uncertain about the action, and you could feel his cynical heaviness surrounding him, the natural purity that he carried with him caused you to talk forward as your kept your hand gripped by your arm, walking towards him with your lips parted and your knees shaken-your future was always uncertain, though you had never cared as much as you did about whether or not the destaiton you had would be gone anytime soon. There had never been any coherent worth, human value to it.

His sotu arm rested lazily by the balcony, ears flicked as he turned his head to the side and turned his expression over to the stick. "There's a reason why certain people go around their life and never receive certain things from anyone, right?"

You had never felt somebody that seemed to be so entangled inside of the most real and authentic thing that you could have ever felt as a living being yourself, and the strain of his rasped voice and the amount of emptienss that it held, the profound despair and human conflict felt carried only by him for so long, only added to that compelling sense of someone who was falling fully into dispiar that there was too much complexity inside of them to ever be tolerated, understood, seen, and far less loved.

"I don't think so. I don't think there's any rules to how anything is, in general. If there was, the world wouldn't be the way it was. Complete chaos."

Bojack gave another laugh; clumsy, awkward, adorable, and his eyes heavy as you say his snout turn to the cigarette. There was a tender adorability to the entirety of the action.

"I guess that is true. I'm sure you would know about all of that. Complete chaos, I mean."

You paused, breathing in as your eyes turned down.

"I'll stay here and give you anything you need on any given day if you need. No matter what it is, no matter how messy or mundane or remarkable."

You could vaguely see the muscles on Bojack's face tremor.

"You know you don't have to earn you way to stay here."

There was a slight defense that shot through you, and you turned your eyes up as you breathed in, rolling your shoulders as you felt a sense of exhsution go through you-and then a settled acceptance, if only for that patience that come for something that you had an intuition that made far more sense than the alteranitve of the long and trying question on the other end without following the path that seemed more trying now, but had more compelling promise to it than anything you had ever even so much as hitned it; the black dark of a disconnected, unremakrbale and terrible life had been on the other end of the path you were used to looking at.

"You're right. I don't have to be anywhere. I never have."

Bojack's eyes winced, in the way that someone's did only when they felt a twinge of guilt; only when they felt something that came from the chaos of an ultimately good heart.

"Come on." He turned to you, stout body easing around as his ears flicked back. "That's not what I meant."

"Even a terrible home is still a home, as long as there's a response to what happens around you to something that makes you feel fully seen in you identity. It's not about comfortability- the relief of emotion, I mean. It's all about being seen in your circumstances as to how you actually feel." You paused at you turned your head down, a natural response to the sudden way his tender and conflicted eyes turned as he turned the lovable curve of his body to look at you with an alarm, with very little understanding despite the clear complexity of conflict in his eyes that he knew very little as to how to execute it.

"Hey, that's not what I-"

"It's akright."

Bojack cut himself off, but the way there was a raise of his hand in agesture, the dangling of the stick in between the spaces of his fingertips, and the vulnerability of the softness of his eyes that overflowed with remorse was all the general idea of what you needed to understand about the conflict in his air.

You knew it wasn't the most appropriate way to respond to his complicated pain, but the desire you had to become closer to his plush body and the way it melded so naturally to a dispairning but consistently enduring disposition was only becoming greater-and the response to it even more muddled.

You found yourself wanting to memorize the way his body breathed from the soft curve of his stomtahc, to the clumsy poke of his teeth and the vulnerable richness in his eyes that carried an entire detailed world inside of it that you knew must have been the euvielent to looking into a perfectly detailed and artistically made dollhouse, only a few inches big, but the richneess beyond the entirely of the superficial of the world. The plush curve of his fattened unremakrablity that dressed across his disposition that should have been reasons for either indifference or on a bad day, contempt, a sit would be with most; but the way Bojakc amde you feel was sepratred from the world entirely, as you were starting to find, separated from the world as you knew it or of anything anyone else knew or had known-isolated, and inrheitnly tragic fr that that something so good had to be considered isoaltued from the world, and yet even the despair of the feeing was made rich in the wake of your allure to him.

You found your eyes memorizing the hill of his stomach that only became more attractive the more you took in his layered psychological state. The soft, gentle plush curve of his stomach as it pressed up against the side of the glass in front of you, the tentative raise of his hand, the stick almost awkwardly falling out between his fingertips from his clumsy inner conflcition. You turned your head away from him, unable to have any kind of conversation with him at that moment- there was too much longing, too much confusing befuddle nature with the way that it was executing itself.

"I'll be inside."

"Wait. No-we can talk more about this. Please."

"It's your house. If you want to talk about it, I'd like to rest a bit. With the lifestyle I have, and with where I'm going overall with my truth, I never know when I'll have to redjust my truth entriely-which I'm ok with, but I would like to take this for what it is while I ca."

You walked your way to the sliding doors as you walked your way past the neon pool, and though your steps were hesitant, there was plenty of a direction moving forward-and if there was an attempt or want for him to change his mind, you knew he had the space. Your hand reached out to the sliding door in frontof you, fingertips hestated, blood rushing, but you kept your swirl of emotion the way you had long since learned to; through keeping it under a kayer of stagnant indifference physically, to work through the wear of the tortimil of your dispion that came along with a life without a consistent identity or the warmth of what you;d described in any way that reflected another. You heard the soft swear that came from his lips, but afterword, a hesitant soft spoken tone of acceptance;

"Sure. Of course. As long as you're here, as far as I'm concerned it's just as much your decision as much as it is mine."

You pressed your hand hesitantly against the side of the door in front of you; his form was reflective against the glass, and you caught the glimmer of the apology in his eyes on his expression deemed unremakrbale by the articles you had read of him over the year.s You could see the way that he was turning his head to you now, looking over at you with those unreadable eyes; and yet there was enough pathetic desperation in them that it spoke plenty, and you knew just from the way he wore his emotion in his expression that he had that purity of heart that demeanded to be expressed, for better or worse.

You felt your knees buckle at the idea of his own eyes even as you kept your focus on tyring to keep your body in robot mode- innocent and lost, but with a certain kind of infatuated heaviness to him that was drunk with its own heavy melancholy, his natural remedy towards coping with life, in an ironic way, and even the way he carried his despair had somehthien so full of depth that it felt far better than happiness; you had learned a long time ago that was humans craved was depth, truth and connection; happiness was just the small tange of a visitor that came now and then, as fleeting as much as physical pleasure.

You felt yourself sigh as you felt a melting inside of your persistence. No matter how silent he attempted to be as you oepend the door, there was something about him that was calling for you from the inside out-something that you both wanted that was foreign and unfamiliar. The complete absolute reckless desire for that warmth of one another, of some strange sense of wanting something that was more than just romantic. He needed a relationship as intense as the one that came from the unconditional form of family, and yet- the concept was only thoughts unspoken that danced behind his eyes. There was a distance from both of your own broken and shattered bullet bewilderment-the want for something that was unremarkable and that would benefit you with the way the world was in no way in a world where existing as the bumbly and unremkable desires you had would never lead to survival; and yet it was neither of your faults, and you craved the want of falling into your pathetic and flawed natures and loving one another in a world where there was usually only superficial noise from the soulless, hatred, where art was fleeting and futile.

And yet, all you wanted, and if Bojakc allowed himself to feel it; himself as well.

"If you want the rest of the weed, it's all yours. I know it's Todd's, but-the kid has so much going on that he'll never notice. Please, it's all yours."

it was almost humorous, the way the intense energy was being filled with such casual speech of hhis stumbling attempt at making that understanding coherent. His ears flickered curiously as you turned your eyes over toward hi ove ryour shoulder for a moment, catching the way his teeth poked as he gazed at you with a conflcied tenderness of bewilderment.. There was a soft sense of tender poetry towards even those words-the words that he cared about you, but didn't know how he spoke it, or even if you could read his language.

"Sorry-I assume everyone's addicted," he added quickly, taking to rubbing the side of his shoulder as he looked at you almost badhfully, shrugging as he looked you over. "Take it if you want. Or don't. It'll be used pretty soon either way."

With the combination of both the most innocent parts of his desire but also the most authentic part of his unremakrbale clumsiness, as it was with most, you never would have thought that something that so incredibly ridiculous in concept could be something that you longed for so deeply that it felt as if you were physically giving out if you aren't able to know it more; though you gave the response something superficial, unremarkable, as most did to try and put a griphold on the constant bewilderment that was human emotion and psychological states, everyone's own worst weapon and enermy at once.

"I'll keep that in mind."

Bojack's ears perked up. "You smoke?"

"Not usually. But moreso from the idea that I have bigger things to try and worry about every day." You give him a tired but bittersweet lift of your smile. "You know?"

His eyes flicked up into something that almost seemed like an emotional alert. "Oh-yeah, Yeah. Sure. It makes sense."

He kept his hand on his arm, still with that incessant pathetic apology across his expression-and the most hearbrekaing image you could come to feel on your headspace, yet one that brought you the most clairty, if only from the meaning.

You shoved open the door, making your way inside before he could respond to anything more, and before you could feed into your desire to. You caught his reflection against the mirror of the glass door just as you took to sliding it closed-his eyes widened slightly, and then just as quickly did they fall back into that usual sarcastic exhaustion that seemed to almost be permeate etched onto his face as he turned his eyes down, emotion on his face plastered into something even more rich and almost etheral in his expression that sed like the most compcliated and lovable hue you had ever taken in. It almost felt like godly insanity, were you to fall into it.

And as it was with human's response to most things that felt true, often maddening and not listening to the inner most truth and snuffing out their own desire, you ignored entirely the desire.

Todd was sat on the couch, and his neon beanie flased like a light through the darkness of the living room, which was currently entirely dark due to Todd's apparent decision to turn off the lights a she slocuhed on the grey couch, sitting in the dark with nothing but the small glare of his phone that was placed in his head. He brigthed as he turned his head over to you/ His innocent, facial speckled skin pinned you down with his causal eyes and that toothy and chipped grin as he met you with that curious and naive, refreshingly empty and freeing eyes that almost seemed impossible to survive the busy streets of the city.

"You heading out?"

"I didn't think you would be back so early."

"It wasn't a big deal, what I did out there tonight. They just needed me to fill out some more order directions and ask some questions." He slouched as he eased his body further back onto the couch, giving a shrug under his large red hoodie. One of his hands were wrapped around a mug, lithe shoulders buried under a blanket. "It's good that I can keep a hand on things for those people. Someone has to-especially the person that invented it, duh. What else would it be otherwise?"

"It must be good to keep people employed. It sounds fulfilling."

"Yeah. It's good for me to always have an island of people that want the same goals as much as I do, you know? Gets lonely around here. In general."

You didn't respond; you turned your eyes over to the window as your eyes caught over to where Bojakc was still standing against the balcony. He had given up watching the door and had settled back for turning his arms back on the metal rail, his shoulders turned in and slouched as he turned back to th ednelss expanse of the lights of the city, cigarette trailing from his fingertip as he looked over the contrast of the incessant ever moving large buildings of the busy and loud world that seemd to repel the needs of the individual; and Bojack, sat small and imposisbly humble, lonely and detached so much to the point that it was hard t believe people like him were apart of the same people that pariitciapted in the endles loud erratic nature of the indifferent quick moving city.

"Yeah." You made your way over to the cabinet, half open from the last time Bojack had drunkley gripped his hand on the door as you fully opened it, turning up on the balls of your feet as you pressed a hand on the cup. "Yeah, I get it."

You walked your way over to the kitchen counter, keeping your body as closed in as much as you could manage as you pulled the cup over the sink, waiting the water spill into the cup.

"It's just so weird, being aroun and working with people that are just as lost as me, you know? I feel like I carry around all these rich narratives and thoughts and experiences and it makes me wonder why I don't have more in life-but then I think about the way that Bojack always saw me. And my mom-everyone, really. And then I look at all the people I work with; theeyr'e a good team of people. I like them. But-I don't know. They're nobody, like me. And when I first meet them, I don't feel like I'm meeting someone with as hafl as much going on in their head as much as I do. I just feel-like they're just this bleak, one note person. And then I start to get to know them, and even if I don't want to, I start to see the way they're all like me. And then I think about how for people like Bojack, who have the glamour and seem interesting, that I'm that person to most people."

"One thing I like to do is to see the process of life like the way you would a movie, including the way you yourself respond to them."

Todd turned his head over the couch as you leaned your elbows by the counter, one chin resting under your palm as the other cradled your cup.

"How do you mean?"

You shrugged, lightly. "Seeing it as all soothing; no opinions, no hard thoughts of judgment. Just taking it all in for what it is; everyone, including yourself, like a soothing something just passing in front of you."

"Oh." His voice was disappointed but accepting, as his eyes, naive but thoughtful, turned down in thought. You could feel the way he was pinning you down with his curious eyes as you made your way to the entrance of the grey stairs that led across the living room as you began to walked your way over to it. You felt his eyes watch you, and it was both endearing and unnerving at the same time; if only for the fact that whatever it was that was in those mundane modled eyes and that chaos of the boyish underlayer of Bojack, you felt like it was the mot vulnerable state you could ever find yourself in.

"Don't be shy to come back if you wanna, ok? Bojack can be a real ass, but he's good somewhere in there."

You pushed as your foot stepped on the first stair, feeling a soft smirk at his words as you turned your head over to where the living room had an even more timeless sense to it than it already did; Todd's eyes protruded and wondering as the blue light of the phone reflected against his expression.

"I"m not leaving anytime soon."

Todd raised his brows. "No?"

You gave Todd a light raise of your lip, and then began to step further as you made your way up the stairs, trying to focus on the cold water cup in your hand, if only to keep yourself from feeling that impossible heat that came from emotional and allure more than you knew what to do with at the thought of Bojack joining you in bed later, though you knew just from the predicaabiltiy of his detachment from your last interaction that the both of you would keep your distance.

"I'll see you in the morning, Todd."

"Bojack!'

Bojac's eyes snapped open at the soft and slow drawl of Todd's voice polluted the air-soft but urgent as it trailed through where there had been nothing but the sound of only the oaccasiaonl sound of the siren or other vehicles of the noise outside-that, along with the soft sounds of your breathing. There was an urgency to it, and Bojack felt the hooded ecapseration of his eyes lower as he began to come fully back to cocniousness in the neon tint of his grey walled bedroom. His back was turned away from you, chubby arm rested under his cheek as he became aware already of the burning under his eyes.

"What is it, Todd?"

"Shush! Shush!" Todd began to rush his way from where he had quite literally tip topepd his way from the crack of the open grey door, a sleepwear of a pompom hat on the top of his black har as he ducked his way inside. Bojack settled for raising his body into a sitting upright psootion as he leaned forward, fingertips pressed against the wear of his face as he sat himself upward.

"IS she awake?" Todd's white eys flashed over to where your small body was currently encircled agannt the sheets, your body turned fully over to the window. Bojack's dry eyes were released from the pressure of his fingertips as he watched Todd until he was leaned beside the edge of the bed, his expression cramped in curiosity as his expression kept snapping over to yours. Bojakc rested his arm on his knee as he looked him over with a raise of an exapsretion of his eyes.

"She isn't yet, but if you keep this up, I'm sure that you and I will be well on our way to having an incredibly disonrnted sleep deprived woman on our hands." His eyes winced as he looked Todd over, his body hunched forward as an ension kept across his unshaven face and his clunky teeth poked through his mouth as he kept daritng his eyes ove to your body. "Why are you in here?"

'Ok-ok. Do you have a minute to talk?"

"No. Not especially.' His eyes lowered in that profound exasperation that spoke of a lifetime of tolerance and a further lifetime of no longer having an pateince as his eyes turned over Todd. "And I don't think that talking here would be the best place to have a chance to talk about literally anything at only-" He turned his head over to the LED clock beside the bowl. "Five o' clock in the morning."

"Shush! Shush!"

"You shush!" He slapped his hand by Todd as his eyes griamced, slapping and waving at him away in almost a boyish way. Todd's eyes closed as he was flashed by Bojack's palm, though he stayed deteremindly stood by the edge of the ebd.

"Bojack-keep your voice down! Are you trying to wake her?"

"Don't you put this on me! You came in here to me!"

"Ok-ok-Bojack-shush. I know. Listen. Listen. Shush. Shush."

Todd's voice was whispered but urgent, and therefore loud if only in its energy; Bojack snapped his wide eyes over to where your body readjusted across the mattress, only for a few inches, but just enough for Bojack to turn his eyes back to Todd as his body was raised up from the entanglement of the grey sheets he was sharing with you.

"Ow! Todd!" Bojack's voice was edged as he absurplty felt himself trip as he got himself upright, ears flowed back as he tripped over his feet and felt Todd's hand grip on his clothes as he tripped forward. "What do you want?"

"We need to talk in the kitchen. Don't worry, it's not about anything to do with anything other than your business. I know that anything else wouldn't be enough of a reason to get up at this hour."

Todd's hand kept gripped on Bojack's wrist as he began to rush him through the open bedroom door frame and over to the kitchen-Bojack's eyes winced as he gave a griamnce while he tripped over his feet and followed Todd to the kitchen.

"Whatever this is, it better be the most worthwhile and goddman amazing thing that you've ever come up with in these four walls." Bojack's eyelids lowered into that mundane indifferenace and empty superiotty the way he always did as he felt Todd's hand grip on his wrist as he began to pull him forward and into the living room. Todd released his grip on Bojack's wrist as he turned over to him and hunched on his legs, pressing his hands in front of him with a gesture.

"Ok. Ok. Bojack-ok. I know. I get that it's been a long time and that this all feels like we're going backward again-"

"You don't say. If there was anyway for me to try and erase my memory so it could at least try to get rid of the feeling that this has happened all before along wth it happening now, that would be incredible." Both of his hands curled on hiss out plush hips, fully vulnerable due to the fact that he had gone to bed in nithing but apple patterned shorts, looking him over with a stoic hard look in his eyes with his eyebrows frozen into a pateroaiznign raise. "Once again, what do you want."

"I wanted-to show you something."

"Goddammit." Bojack's fingertips came to raise on his snout as he closed his eyes. He took them off a she gave Todd his stoic dry expression. "This isn't something to do with another invention or smething to do with that buniess that came so easy? I told you none-"

"Bojack, get your head out of your ass and listen, please. This si somehting I know you'll care about. I think it's important."

Bojack's expression became more forgiving, his eyes turning down as his grumpiness and defnese began to turn into curious exhaustion. "Make it quick, please."

"I don't know if there's such thing as 'quick' when it comes to people talking about something this..demenaing, Bojack. And it's not hard to catch up on what's going on with it, anyway."

Bojack's voice was somber, gente, but insistent with aggravated bewilderment and disorientation as he managed a quick; "What the hell are you talking about?"

"I was just going to turn on the television and let it play for when you and your…girlfriend woke up this morning."

A slight widening of Bojack's eyes, and an ease of a sudden light in his eyes as he looked Todd over with someht t that came across as a warning.

"Now I know I don't need to correct you on that."

"Ok. Quick sex partner and distraction, whatever." Todd waved his hands as he rolled his eyes; Bojack's fingers palled into a fists in frustration as his ears lowered as he looked him over with a glare.

"Todd, don't talk about her like that when she-"

"Bojack, this isn't what I wanted to talk about." Todd's hands gripped on both sides of his head, and Bojack's eyes widened as he watched Todd made his way over to the remote by the television. He turnd as he met Bojack's questioning eyes while Todd slammed his hand on the remote, turning it with a few quick changes to the news channel. "I need you to keep an eye on the news. At first, I thought, well, he'll figure it out and see it eventually anyway, and tried not to make it too much of a thing. But then I overheard you and the woman talking behind the bathroom door to one another, and you btoh agreeing before bedtime that it would be better if she left early in the morning-"

"You were listening to us? I thought you were asleep or doing one of your stupid business blueprint plannings."

"Well, I was actually just waiting for the bathroom, but-"

'There were multiple ones downstairs, Todd." His fists balled further beside his hips, eyes glaring and ears kept down. "You know this."

"Ok, I can tell you're mad at me, but that's not important right now. I need you to focus on what's going on this morning. You want that woman to go back out there into what we both know is already a lot of really bad shit, then it's goingt o be wrose than it's been in a long time if you push her out right now."

"What are you talking about?"

Todd's face turned into a grimace as he poured, turning his troubled eyes over to the pink curtains that were currently fully spread over the window.

"Look, Bojack-I don't know if this would be best as someehitng I should show you through the news or something you should see in person, but-when I saw it, I knew I had to do something, so."

"Whatever it is, I think it would be for the best interest to keep it quick so I can go back to the sleeping curled up sad thing in my bed."

"Are you planning on kicking her out?"

Bojack's ears flew down, a pout across his expression as he offered him a glare of his eyes.

"Not kicking her out. I'm just trying to do what feels like is the most appropriate for the both of us, considering where she came from and the fact that it's a big deal for her to stay here. Same as it was for you."

"Uh-huh. And why are you feeling the need to kick her out so quickly?"

"Because-she's a woman. That's the reason why. You know the logic and the understanding of that as well as I do. We don't need to elaborate." His arms crossed over his chest as he watched Todd while he tripped over his large sleeping slippers, his body making its way over to the pink curtains and the plastic shades that sat in front of the window as he made his way over, crooked teeth poked out from his worried expreession. "Was there a point to this, or can I take this misadventure off and go back to bed?'

"I think this will be relevant to the decision you want to make." Todd's pout increased as he turned his head over to the television, tapping his fingertip on the button the screen flashed on. Bojack kept his arms crossed agsitn his plush body as ears lowered while he turned to the television; in front of him was there several heelicopters that were surrounding the vast overexpanse of the Los Angeles buildings that were crossing against the valley that crossed from Bojack's balcony and over through the cluster of the city buildings. Bojack's eyes widend as he looked it over, then lowered into ane exhausted exasperation as he turned his head and looked over at Todd with a raised brow.

"So people are freaking out about some dumb shit to keep them busy this morning? What does that have to do with me?"

"No. Bojack! Please-concentrate!" Todd's eyes hallowed as he snapped his arms over to the televisions screen, and the annoyance in Bojack's eyes increased as he flashed his eyes over to the screen.

"Yes, I get it! They're going around and filming shit in the air. What was it this time, two birds making love in the sky? They always love to throw that in our faces."

"Bojack, just stop for a minute, ok? You don't know everything. Honestly, I'd rather have you see it on the screen first than to see it out here?"

"What do you mean, out here? Is it outside?" Bojack's voice edged as his tone pipped, and Todd gripped his hand on the strong that swung against the plastic pink curtain in front of the windows, the pout easing across his features as he turned around and gripped his hand on the rope. The plastic curtains gradually began to open, peeking and dimming in through the plastic pink curtains as they gradually began to turn over and be pulled back.

"No, Todd-don't wake her, ok?" Bojack began to walk over to Todd, tripping over the table as he kept his arms raised out beside him while he stumbled his way over to where Todd's troubled expression was focused on the curtains. "The more noise you make, the easier it'll be for her to wake up, and then I have to try to decide-"

"And around the area of where there is the landmarks such as Bojack Horseman's balcony is there something notably more disturbing and outlandish than we would have expected even on Hollywood's most unexpected ans unpredticable day. One days like this, it is difficult to not see us as we are and not for who we wish for us to be."

"Landmark?" Bojack's head turned over his shoulder as he paused halfway to walking to Todd, eyes wincing as he turned his head over his shoulder, ears splayed back while he looked over to the screen. "They've never described my house like that before."

"With the amount of attention this is going to get, I can't imagine the amount of labels they're going to ascribed in general." Todd grunted as he contuiend to pull the white string through his head.

"What are you talking about?"

Despite Bojack's attempt at wanting to keep things quiet and lowered, his voice became more edged and raised; borderline pipped into an edge of a demeand while he winced as the soft orange light of the new day began to peek out over the buildings. He placed a hand on the front of his forehead as he lookd over through where the buildings were starting to peek out through the clattering of the plastic curtains and over the orange light that was no peeking out over the buildings, ears splayed as he looked it over.

"As to whether or not the murder of this pig woman is something that is meant to be a statement or an extremely erratic show, it is regardless something that we will be taking into account-as in, fancy newspaper headlines."

"What?"

Bojack breathed the word as he turned his head over his shoulder and over to where the ripping of the helicopters were now starting to raise into a further roar, the shakiness of the camera that was held in one of the helicopters begninnng to shake in its perspective as it starting to swerve around the blurienss of the image in front of the helicopters as they swerved around something that was blurred in the brown that surroudne dthe vision of the helciotpers. The shakiness of the camera increased, and there was a a flash of something caven and rotten through the wrinkles of something flashed and bloodied through the spike of the pike that was jammed through the front o the mouth. Bojack's ears perked, and his eyes widned as he felt a flash of black shock go through his chest at the image of the white rolled eyes of the pig woman and the spike of the rail that was jammed through the body; the shakiness f the camera left plenty to be desired in regards to Bojack beginning to see it fully, but he jumped back as his eyes winded while he timidly gave a reaht as he jumped back, ears parked as his hands tenderly eased across his chest in caution. He raised one leg as he looked over the screen, fll endearing of his fear easing across his expression as he looked over the flash of the pig woman again while the heliclotpers counitied to flash across the wooden pike.

Bojack winced as he felt his blood rushing across his senses, teeth poked as his eyes turned over the screen as several frantic news reports flashed across the front of the helicopters, the reports flashing across the screen with several large blocked words flashing quickly that was reporting the name of the pig women and who she ahd been. Whether Bojack meant to or not h felt his eyes flashing across the words;

Dancer. Teacher for fifteen years, forty years of age. In the mourning only a few streets away from the builings of several houses on the Beverly Hills way and the height of the space that is about eye level to Bojack's house there were resorts of a woman who we have woken up to with her head fully jutted up into a pike, her eyes fogged and with several tattered rippings across her dress that she is reported to having worn in a night dance earlier last night while the fireworks were imploding across the buildings….

The words and the reports kept flashing by, but Bojack felt himself grip his hand onto the side of his other arm as he walked his way over tot he couch, the hesitnaley settled in front of the screen as his ears lowered while he turned and looked over at it, ears lowered down as his expression held a dim melancholy of disbelief to it as he tools the reports and the shouts that were being traveeld across the hsakness of the heeliocpters and the recordings in.

"This is ridiculous." Bojack's eyes turned over the shakiness of the camera, this time more clear shots of the pig woman's body; her head was pipepd up through the steak entirely, her mouth opened, eyes rolled back, and where Bojack had disitinevley remembered there being a contentment of pleasure across her expression only a few hours earlier, there was no a pale and stock look that came along with the lack of blood in her face, eyes eyes empty, the wrinkles on her features fully caved in. His ears lowered back further as he winced, plush body sitting forward as he watched the continued chaotic direction of the camera increase around the steak "How long has she been out there for?"

"You want to take a look out and see for yourself?"

Bojack felt a jolt at the words and what they suggested, and he winced as he turned his head over his shoulder and watched where Todd's pale hands were gripped across the rest of the curtains, and the plastic of them began to continue to hit against one another as he pulled the plastic back. Bojack leaned his body back as he looked over to where the plastic curtains were now beginning to pull further back, and in its wake was the full clear look of the windows beside the plastic as there was a gradual dim sunrise that was peeking out and over through the buildings, an ominous dark blood orange to the way the sun raised up and over the buildings as it began to raise itself upward and through the buildings.

The pink curtains turned back entirely, Todd slouched over while he stepped his way back and over his feet as the curtains began to be pulled back until they rested in their usual cramped place beside the gray wall beside the windows. The red orange light that came along with a sunrise was increasing in its enriching of the way the orange hue continued to eased across the sky, reflecting against the buildings into a heavy and orange laden blood red that crossed against the expanse of the sky.

"Look, I know that neither of us wants this to be a whole thing here, and I get it." Todd raised his hands up to make a point as he allowed the string to ease out of his fingers. Bojack, after a moment of hesitance, began to raise himself upward as he looked over the edge of his balcony; already could he see the hint of the pike of the rod that was raising up and over the valley and the buildings, the stick of the wood rod raised up, and he could briefly see the limp the pig woman's ears as he raised himself upward, eyes winced as he began to make his way over to the window. "But if you want that woman to go out into the big wide unknown any time soon just because you can't keep it between your legs or whatever, and if you care about her at all, then I thin you should keep her here for a little while. Best way to go about making sure someone like her doesn't end up like this. I mean-I don't mean this in a certain kind of way, but-this woman was someone, you know? Imagine what someone like that woman will end up as."

Bojack felt the blood in his viens rush as he made his way to the door, ears lowered as he raised out a hand and slid it across the front door. He began to open it forward as he winced and looked out and over the balcony, mane swept through with the breeze that eased across his mane. He began to step his way outward as he felt his teeth poke while he walked his way out to the balcony, more aware of the silence of the whispering of the silence of the isolated balcony more than he ahd ever been.

His trouebled eyes turned up to where he could see the harrowing height of the pike now, and the stout body of the body who's body was now entirly paralzed and turned up through the height of it, her head turned back and with her mouth gradually cracked open, and Bojack felt a jolt as he saw the way that there was a dry trial of salvia guinding down her mouth. Though she was nowhere near Bojack's balcony, placed in the same area of where she had been previously with the wya her body had twireld in the air only a few nights before, there was now only her body jutted up through the pike through the vallerys of the hills and the streets that crossed over through the hills and the spaces of the place that separated Bojack's house from the cluster of the city.

"Jesus."

His fingertips cramped against his hand as he felt something hollow inside of him in a screeching and harrowing way as his eyes turned over the pike that sat against the blood orange of the new dawn of the dark, the hue of the black silhouette against the sky while the body kept snapped back unnaturally in contrast to the orange and the deep red behind it. His eyes winced as he turned his head back, the fear in his eyes deepening, and feeling more aware of how small he was in contrast than ever, as he turned his head over the pike, the breeze picking up as he eased his head upward to the pike that sat in the hallowing extent of the emptiness that surroudened he hills of the pike. Behind it was there the buzzing of a helicopter that was passing by it, the buzzing coming from the roaring of the helicopter as it began to ease its way past the pike with the rumbling of the buzz easing through it-one of the last helicopters that were recording from the mania now airing from earlier that morning.

"Yeah, he's ok. Just make sure you don't try to spoke him. If I know anything about the way Bojack is, he's usually more than likely going to make some big deal out of this for turning his perception over the balcony. Just take it easy on him, you know?"

Bojack took a breath as he turned his head over his shoulder, eyes wincing as his ears lowered while he looked over to where he could hear the way you were responding lowly to Todd; your head was turned down as you talked to him warmly, your eyes dimmed in something cautious, and your hands eased across your arms as you talked to Todd lowly. Bojack winced as he turned his head over his shoulder while he saw he way you raised your head up and over through the darkness of the dim inside of the living room, and his ears lowered as he looked you over and gave a soft breath; partly from his uncertainty as to how to respond and dealing with the shock feeling coming over him at his perception of what was in front of him, and an odd annoyance that you had woken up.

"So much for keeping things low and private." His eyes lowered as he turned while he began to walk between to the two of you, turning his head back over to the pike, if only for the shock. "I thought it would be awhile before you could make this a challenge, Todd."

"She woke up because she heard the helicopter." Todd's eyes flared across Bojack as he looked him over. He stepped back as your eyes turned down, hands pressed against the same satin white dress on your body as you kept your eyes down. "At least I tried to warn you."

"By what?" Bojack raised a brow in that dry stoic fashion, and he turned his eyes as he looked you over, and a sense of shame and embarrassment eased across his eyes as he looked you over. "I'm sorry that this woke you up. This wasn't what I had in mind for-well, not just you, really. This entire morning is already-something."

Your eyes turned up as you gazed at him and gave him a slight raise of your lip, eyes red and detached, cheeks flushed as you looked him over, the pale of your skin looking even more delicate and soft in a way Bojack was allured to in a powerful but somber degree; the red of your eyes that came from your lack of sleep, the odd natural motherly nature you carried with you, the essence you carried was something that either inspired much of the same out of him, if there could be any belief he carried that he could carry such tenderness, or that he wanted to cradle or and be known by it entirely.

"Being small, humble looks good on you. A lot of people I've known can't say that. You have the certain purity that carries it well."

Bojack's eyes took on a more emotional hue, bewildered, as he looked you over.

'Thank you." It was more of a question than an acceptance, but in the air that surrounded him just by being near your presence, he found he didn't mind, or even processed it. The quality of richness that came from even being by you was enough to overtake him, even as he still felt that shocked fear overcoming him fro what he had perceived. You stepped forward, Todd slouched as he watched you as you began to ease your head over the side of the door, head turning out as you looked over the door.

"Oh. Uh-" Bojack's hand reached out to erase onto your arm; your eyes turned up as you looked up at him in question. His ears lowered as he looked you over, caution against his eyes, bewilderment, unknowing; but most odd, a sense o want for protection. "You don't need to go out there. As a matter of fact, please don't." Your stepped forward, but Bojack abruptly raised his hand forward to you, and you paused as you snapped your eyes up to him again, and his teeth poked as he gave you an odd begging in his eyes. "Whatever is happening out there is nothing you need to concern yourself with, I promise."

"Bojack, she's not a kid, ok?"

"Aren't you the one who suggested that I was able to take care of her?"

"It's alright." Your head ducked over Bojack's arm, and his ears lowered as he looked you over while he stepepd back, your eyes eased over the balcony as you turned your head over to the empty space where he could see the relfeciton of the dead pig woman and her body, and the reflection of the pike, in your eyes. His ears lowered and he stepped his way back from where he had attempted to block the doorway, though there was a sense of guilt about it as he leaned his hand away from the side of the door and watched as you began to walk your way out, white dressing bellowing against the thrills of your dress the same way that it had done with his mane as you walked your way outward. "I know I've seen worse."

"Worse?" Bojack's hed turned as he watched you walk out, and his expression winced as ears lowered while he watched you make your way out. "Worse than a murder of a pig dancer on a pike?"

Your hands pressed by your arms as you continued to make your way out, walking around the pool as you did so while your head turned up to the pike, the eeriness of it only adding to the raise of the breeze while your head turned up to the pike, the pig woman's dead carcess and her dress, almsot considered once beeaitul if only for the seitnemnt of the see through of the thrills o her dress as it responses to the breeze that swept through the city, eased across her dress.

"More surreal, no." Your head turned to the side as you looked the pike over. Bojack eased his eyes up in an exhausted and worried emotion as his teeth winced, and he tripped over the door as he began to follow you out.

"Don't memorize it. It's bad enough that it's going to be my decor for the next few days whether I want it to be or not. Who knows how long it will take to get rid of that thing."

"I'm alright. I learned a long time ago that my dysfunction as a person wasn't from myself but rather from the lack of my needs, emotionally and otherwise, weren't met. I've spent plenty of days just processing and surviving. I'll continue to do that now."

"Yeah, but-" Bojack's teeth poked as he turned his hallowed eyes up to the pike, the silhouette of it easing against the sky as he turned his eyes up, ears lowered.

"Bojack, she said drop it, ok?" Bojack winced in that glare of his pufy eyes as he turned and saw Todd placing his sleeping hat back by his head, and Bojack's ears lowered down as he felt his stout fingers ease against his palms again.

"Now suddenly because you saw it first you get a say about who gets to decide what works best?"

"It's not as if she wasn't going to see it." His hand placed itself against the sleeping pom of the hate, and he gripepd his hands across the yellow blanket he had thrown onto the couch as he wrapepd it over his shoulders, hunched forward. "I'm going to go back to the master bedroom. Let me know if you need to talk, ok? Both of you. It's bad enough I had to see the thing in the first place on my own. You're welcome for showing you."

"Please do. One less thing to worry about going on in this area." Bojack had an edge to his voice as he looked over at Todd, but as Todd raised up a hand and gave him a lazy wave, he was far more aware of the hitch of the rasped exhaustion and worry in his voice that came along for caring for you in a way that was more heavy than he could have liked. He turned as his hands kept cramped on his chest while he began to walk his way to where your head was now turned fully over to the pike, your head eased upward, your arms coming to rest on the metal rail of the balcony as you turned upward. The white of your dress contuiend to blow through the breeze and eased against Bojack's mane, and he paused before he contuied to walk to you further, and settled for staniding a few inches away from you, breathing in as he rolled his shoulders.

"I'll work on making you something." He rubbed his arm, hand caressing across his arm as he looked over at your almost bashfully, but stoic in that maturity that was in his eyes."If you want."

"Why would someone do this?"

Bojack took in a breath, sighing as he winced and looked over the pike.

"I'm sure you could go over that question in your head all day and never be able to come even close to an answer that whatever these kind of people can think of. And by these people. I meant the people I've bene surrounded in. All loonies."

You didn't reply, your head only craned up to the pike as you titled your head to the side. There was a delcialcy to you as the breeze contuiend, and Bojack's eyes turned down as he gave a small shrug of his shoulders.

"I'll make something for you." He stepped back, his eyes darting over to where the pig woman's dead body was still piked across the rod, then flicked his eyes back over to your back. "Do you want anything, by any chance? Anything specific? Any coffee?"

"I'll take whatever it is that you make."

"Oh. Sure. Sure." His fingertips played as he stepped his back back between the doors, ears lowered down as he looked you over. "Don't worry too much about the woman. I know it's hard not to think too much about these kind of things, but it's just another blimp in the road, right?"

His eyes winced as he rubbed his arm, but he could see even just from the back of your body that you were untouched by his pathetic uncertain attempt at reaching you.

"She was celebrating something last night."

"Well, yeah. Probably something similar to whatever the fireworks were about. That would be my best best."

"Something else entirely."

He watched as he saw your head tilt down, your fingertips eased across the rails, and Bojack's wince kept on your palms as you kept your hand on it. "Something not unlike this feeling of something I've never comprehended, but I've always felt and longed for it, in a sense. That was how she made me feel last night. And, somehow, what happened to her doesn't feel entirely unlike what I keep feeling like would happen, if I found that longing something that I've always been looking for that I felt for even a little while while I watched her last night. "

Bojack took another breath, this time deep enough that he felt the slight rumble in his tone at it, and he closed his eyes as his ears lowered while he turned his head downward, ears lowered.

"I'll make something to keep you alert. Make the house warm for you. One of us has to make a decision as to how to go about this day. We can talk more about when you want to leave and how later."

Your head turned to the side, chin rested beside your elbow as you eased your head to the side while the breeze continued to pick up.

'Am I leaving?"

"I-" Bojack's eyes widned, and that same tender humble ucneritny, pathetic and humbly human, eased across his expression as he turned his eyes down in thought, rubbing the side of his arm. "I don't know, ok? Let's just wait and see what happens. As for this-" He indicated his hand to the pike. "This will probably be taken care of in the next few days. Just try to block out any noise or construction or, alternately, any snap happy people that come along to make themselves interesting. Just focus on getting yourself on the road, ok?"

There was no response from you for a moment, and your head only kept upright to the pike as you kept your head turned forward. The breeze continued, and the more the blood orange of the early morning light began to introduce the day into something more calm and filtered, the yellow light mooring across the pike and tracing the light of the pig woman's features and the side of the pike while hinted across the buildings, the more he felt the stretching silence that came with someone unspoken, but fully felt.

"It's funny. When you start to see things as empty going forward, you look back on everything that every happened to you, good and bad and indifferent, and they all fall into the same stagance of the same story; like something once remembered now gone entirely, and now that it's gone it all goes under the same grievance of everything that happened that made a life, as if it all deserved to be grieved just because it did make a life. I wonder if that's how she felt shortly after they did this to her."

Bojack's teeth winced as he turned his eyes up to the pike, then lowered his ears as he began to step his way back through the door.

"I'll be inside if you need anything, ok?" He stepped his way inside, his head turned as he looked over at you witht he image of your small body, as small and as feeble as much as his, turning up to the pike. His body began to become immersed into the dark of the living room as he made his way inside, giving a breath to reset as his ears lowered back while he made his way inward. His eyes, now fully aware of how heavy and tired they were, turned over to the kitchen, and he made his way over to the kitchen, grazing his hand on two cups inside of the board as he kept his eyes turned to you know and then.

Over in the trialing of the still fairly dim and darkliving room, every day spent with more empty heaviness thna there had been previously while dressed through every day he had carried himself through the sheltered and icnreasingly more complex but hollowing emptinesss, he heard Todd's voice starting to sing through the open door of the guest room. Bojack's eyes turned down to the cups as he pressed the dryness of his mouth together, the thrill that came along with you promising a safe richness that was beyond understanding; as was the life that had been empty and harrowing before that carried that beyond comprehension feeling that your own tired voice had reflected now.

He sat against you on the side of the couch, his body wrapped up by his robe and little else, plush stomach sticking out, his body leaned beside the couch, eyes troubled, puffy expression squinting.

"Thanks for coming over here." His stout fingertips scratched by the side of his neck, eyes winced as hiss omber voice spoke authentically. "And-staying."

His voice was reflective, soft, hitched with conflicted emoion-if a little slurred from the liquod reason that was thrown over the floor, coming in the form of various flasks that were thrown onto of several more garbage that was carelessly tossed onto the ground from where the three of the occupants of the inside walls collectively had tried to be able to turn the day over in a blur. Helicopters had come and gone from the outside, and though the fogged blurriness and detachment that surrounded you that came from the overprocessing of worrying and seeing the stuck out fogged eyed pig in front of you with her body stuck and dead, dress blowing through the breeze and skin becoming more disscared and scratched as the hurs of the day went on, you found yourself becoming more present, accepting, peaceful in the wake of the horror and the general fear of the future and of what it asked of you up ahead in your future; the disorienting unknown and having a physical and mental home and otherwise, but only because of that niche beauty of meaning Bojack gave you in his humble clumsy human presence by virtue of existing in a way that you almost felt nervous to forget; far too easy for someone who seemed unseen outside of whatever eyes you had been gifted for the time you were with him.

You smiled, reflective, soft as you turned your eyes down to the cup that rested in your hand; Bojack had uncerintly guided it over to your palm, eyes uncertain and vulnerable and teeth poked as you had felt his stout and nervous tender expression easing across your palms as he had handed the cup to you. Your fears and worries, all of which were reasonable reflected by the future ahead of you and not lessened, felt just a little more bearable, if only for the fact that they had been processed to the point of exhaustion and dull complacency for the time being.

"You were the one that was kind enough to let me stay here."

He gave a rasped breath, shrugging, ears lowered as his eyes turned downward.

"I just want us to be on the same page of where this is going. To have a clear understanding." His eyelids lowered as he looked over to you, dark eyes not quite meeting up to yours as he kept his eyes distant and detached, in the way that came along with someone emotionally wise enough to see things as they were in the instincts of emotional intelligence and of being aware of life's constraint complexities of all current ongoing life, yet he couldn't being himself to look up to your eyes-not quite. "I don't want us to think we're hitting one target and then end up hin some disoriented something else entirely when we thought we were going one way and end up another."

"I know. But I think we have a good thread of clarity of where we're going."

Bojack raised a brow, eyes turning up to you with on his features in that teasing fashion-at least as much as he could manage in the middle of that delicate, thick, demanding and heavy uncertainty.

"Do we? I wasn't entirely aware."

"I feel it, anyway. Even if it ends, or doesn't end the way we thought or would like, I want to think that long term, we'll both feel a little better for this.

Your voice was cautious, weaning, but tender. You kept your arms pressed at your sides, your palms delicately placed around the mug. You could still feel that sickening fear and black feeling of taking in the pig woman, the mania of the future and, for the first time, an odd feeling of stagance in existence that you had never been comfortable enough in life to be able to experience-the distinct difference between working yourself too hard with stress just to stay alive, and the alternative of the feeling of too much emptiness feeling inherently disorienting and wrong. Your shoulders rolled back, easing further beside the gray couch.

"I'm glad you feel that way." His worried yes turned to you, ears splayed back as his eyes turned down without full disclosure. "Really." His eyelids lowered while he looked in front of him, eyes stoic, considering. "At least that's one thing that came out of these weird events."

Outside, another blare of the roar of the helicopters outside increased, jutting up over through where there was enough heavy and melancholic isolation from the distance of Bojack's location where there was now the occasional drive of the jets. Bojack's eyes, dim and exhausted and having an oddly graceful stoic look to them that came along with someone who was heavy in thought-something you had come to admire about him-turned as he looked over to the window, ears lowered as he winced and looked over to the window. His hand was pressed against his plush stomach, legs crossed over one another as he kept his feet on the table; there was a lovable humanity to the way he was shaped in his plump form, and the trouble in his eyes that suggested a complex and formable headspace of someone dense in thought.

"I don't know if you would agree with this, but-it does seem like someone would have planned the damn thing with the pig. You know? Why would someone like her do all that, knowing that it would put her in danger? It dosen't make sense. It's a foggy situation-" He paused as he gave a low breath, then lowered his ears as he turned his eyes down to the table in front of him. "Sorry. It's just that Todd thinks I should keep you here if there's any chance of people doing weird shit like this, and I'm not sure how to feel about that."

You paused as your eyes glisented across the mug in front of you. Your head turned as you looked over the height of Bojack's disposition, turning your eyes over to where a helicopter was hovering over the stuck out body. Several ropes were starting to be spun out from the door, and you caught sight of the men that were sticking their heads outward as they began to call to one another, rope stringing in their palms as they tossed each other the strings while landing in the other's hand.

"You're right." You turned towards him, adjusting your body as you slung your arms on the back of the couch. "It is."

Bojack's eyes turned up from where he was gazing in front of him, eyes exhausted and humble in his emptiness; his eyes widned as his head turned up, and he turned as he looked you over, reajdusting to your clear insisntence as you laned your arm behind the couch.

"You really think so?

"I've seen enough, and I know what people are csapable of."

The muscles on Bojack's features treamored, and he turned his eyes down in thought. Your allure for him overcame you again; in the way that a sense of energy and power came over you whenever you were beside him; the intensity and humanity that came along with being intensely focused on someone.

"Honestly, I think it's the belief and the drive of what people do that makes something like this happen. I'd almost prefer the lazy bums like Todd to just be foggy eyed cattle not knowing who they are every day than to have to deal with people that are believing and have a drive for the wrong thing."

"I'll stay here for as long as you want me."

Bojack's ears flicked, his timid and uncertain eyes gazing up to you with his ears lowered, expressing searching yours as his eyes danced across your body-as if looking for something, and that intense feeling that came along with profound connection increased. Your shoulders rolled back as you eased your head up, breathing in to calm that odd surreality that came over you from the emotional connection.

'Do you have any plan? When I get you out of here?"

"Not especially." You breathed, a soft reset in your body as your eyes memorized the cup, tracicng against it, remembering the warmth that eased through you just at his touch. "But I've been alive and have felt terrible and struggled enough at this point to readjust to what everything is and doing my best to simple adjust and be apart of the product rather than just someone who's fighting against a life that has long since settle into what it is. In that sense, I'll be fine."

Bojack's eyes turned down as his ears flicked back further, eyes distant and worried in his consideration as his arm leaned back behind the couch, ears turned down. The suggestion of you staying, as well as the inherent suggestion of the emotional intimacy that came along with it, was one that was turning in your mind, whether you acknowledge it or even so much as accepted it, and you felt yourself trying to do the impossibility of reading Bojack's expression, boyish and tender and lost and endearing as it was.

But rather thn saying anything to feed the thread, Bojakc sighed deeply as he leaned his body to the table, plush stomach turning into his lap as he eased his hand on the glass of the liquor he had poured into it, turning his body back against the couch as he leaned himself back, ears splayed, eyes winced in a natural worried tender concern.

"You wouldn't believe some of these pretentious Hollywood assholes that spend more time worrying about the nuts that sprinkle on the top of their caesar salads than they would about actually trying to, you know, pick stories like this that actually matter. Or talk about anything other than their two dimensional entertainment that I've been begged to be apart of for as long as I've tripped into this business."

He body was lazily thrown backward onto the couch, arms slung on the sides. His stomach protruded from the sides of his robe as it flew back, his apple speckled pajamas lazily tossed aside. "Washed-up, tired, over it. Done for."

"What is?"

His eyes turned in front of him, empty, distant, oddly wise. "Everyone, I guess. The way people are in general." He gave a breath as he eased his body back, hand pressed on his leg that trested on his other thigh. "But there's not much to be done about it except, like you said, just trying to adjust to it."

A sniff, and then his head turned towards the side as he looked back over to the helicopters. Already was

"It's going to take them a while to get that poor woman out of there. Even longer to get the noise and the news to slow down."

His eyes glinted with emotion, and looked over at you, the bottom eyelids of his expression squinting and twitching with a clear discomfort.

'Honestly, I did that so well to the point where I didn't even know the difference between that which I hated and myself. So I guess I can't really be one to judge or even criticize. It's not like I've done anything to change the way things are." He stretched, giving a grunt as he breathed in deep, rolling his shoulders, and that rich humble feeling of humanity that came from a threaded narrative only from himself came over you again. "Best thing I could do was to do small, minute things-like taking people like Todd and you in. Everyone feels good and bad from certain perceptions for a reason, right? At least I can follow through with it by doing whatever it is to make the day a bit more bearable. It took me ages to regoncgizne why I could barely get through the day, and even longer to try and find anything that worked to make it a little bettr."

"No person was who actually those things would be able to recognize he's that in the first place."

Bojack shrugged, smally, eyes still empty and expression puffed as he started in front of him throuhtuflly, sullenly.

'Yeah, well."

Your body as facing towards him now, bones protruded, yoru cusitory eased over to the profound allure, your eyes turning over him. Your hand was almost grazing his mane-the first time you had felt anything other than something lower and more dehumanzing than the gritty tolerance of a mna's body for the longest time you could remember, and one of the few attons of paths that didn;t leave you empty. You had forgotten the combination between the coarse feel and the softness of it from the few times you hand had accidently grazed against it. It only made you want to know it more.

"I think it would be good to talk to Todd about how long he's staying here again. It feels like he's doing me a favor more than I am doing him anything this time. If I figure that out, maybe I can transfer it over to the both of us figuring out what to do from here on out. If that was something that you wanted."

"I don't have anywhere to go, anywhere to be."

He paused, eyes darkening. "That must be exhausting."

Your lip raised further, in a bittersweet reflection.

"Yes, well. You do what you can."

"Yeah. I get it."

His voice was strained, his tone lowered as he thought over the depth of his thought over the situation. He tossed the newspaper that had been littered with various types of Todd's items to the ground, not bothering to pick it up as it hit itself onto the already littered floor with a soft papered sound of a hiss, one that was full of receipts, various grocery bags, photos of other various newspapers of currents events, various thrown cigarettes among some of the metallic alcohol bottles that had manifested throughout the afternoon.

"It's nice that you're here. I mean that. I'm sorry that it's turned out so strange."

"Honestly, the time has never gone by faster. I've never felt more at home-at least as much as home evr had. Any flaws-I don't mind at all. It's not as if there's always going to be countless anyway."

Bojack gave a soft, rasped grunt; unreadable, but the expression in his eyes dimmed and showed off pletnly of emotion. He leaned his body backward against the couch and pulled his arms on the front of his chest- as for your own, they stayed rested complacent against the back of the couch, your own eyes burning from the lack of sleep you got; the hours you had while you had been here had been generous, but there was an odd feeling of a strain benign there-as if there was too much to be discovered, and an odd timeless feeling that kept stretching out in front of you-the image of the pig woman and her empty and bloodshot eyes being one of the signs that was a physical embodiment of it. You were trying to keep your head as much as you were able; the indeifnable nd crazy narratives that your mind ketp throwing at you you knew you had to keep to a grounding functionality. The soft, humble and grounded promise of Bojack was one of the only tools that were working

"They'll be onto this for a few days. The fact that it's by my house will come around every now and then."

"Do you like that?"

He shrugged again, that dry emptiness in his expression still just as present-someone who had seen life for all that it was, but had never discovered the tools of how to navigate it.

"Like, love-it's all a lot of noise." His head turned to you, but only for a a few inches, and his eyes didn't turn back up to meet yours again. "At least it's a reason for people to care about this place, which means in turn that they'll care about your story."

"I don't care about that."

"Are you sure? That's one of the best ways that you could ensure better survival. Nothing better than being known-" His eyes turned up in thought. "-or, in this case, working on being from a known location. If they see you leave here, maybe someone wll ofer you-"

"What? A place to stay?"

"No, probably not. But-"

"Money to make a living? A job?"

"Jesus. Ok. I get it." His eyes were even more lovingly vulnerable as his ears lowered, expression turned down. "I just mean that I want to help you in any way I can. I know we're both grasping for straws here, but I want us to see things as they are with a clear head-and help you through it if I can."

Your eyes were turned toward the front of the cluttered table, full of various different beers and other magazines, some of which had Bojack on them in small, low quality and blurred snapshots-and from several years ago.

"Todd thinks that taking these materials and tyring to turn them into something for his business-adertizements for his life story or something-will make something great with his next ad campaign I may as well give him that."

"He does seem to have a lot of energy."

"He does. It's good to have people like that around now and then. Keeps the prespective and the energy up. As..troublesome as it is sometimes, he does bring around a certain energy that you start to appreciate the more you get older and see how hard it is to find…anything, anywhere, really."

His last word ended on a breath, the word breathed rather than simply spoken, and you saw how his shoulders visibly eased downward. Up and over the grey stairs, there was the occassional sound of Todd's slow and drawl voice that was easing down the stairs, his energy enticing through the air, his feet and the large sandals he wore tapping on the upstairs space.

The sound of the men calling outside to one another over through the sliding windows and the way they were yelling at one another as they tossed each other the rope increased, the pig woman's body coming to land beside their hands as the men kept their hands cradled by the pig woman's curves; her boy looked rotted while turned over against their palms, the back of her beck snapping behind her shoulders as she broke beside their palms.

Two fingers snapped by your face. You blinked rapidly as you raised your head from the image of the woman as her body was turned agsintt he ropes of the men. Bojack's eyes winced as he watched your eyes blink rapidly as your expression snapped back over to him, and his plush body leaned back as he looked you over with both apology and concern.

"I'm sorry. I needed to. I don't think you should be memorizing the details of something like that if you csn help it even more than I already let you this morning. I can't imagine that it would be healthy."

Your eyes turend as you met the emotion in his; unredbale, eyes fluttering down now and then in a way that would be suggested for someone with a timid heart, mental headspace erratic and intentions and esstem blurred from his end.

"I am a grown woman. I can do what I'd like."

His ears splayed, bottom eye winced as he gave a breath, muscles on his face tense. His pupils flickered as he looked you over, body eased back, seprarting a bit of distance.

"That is true. You can."

Your eyes fluttered down, your fingertips tracing against the side of the mug.

"I've never had anyone protect me before. Or want to."

"Well, that is good. Because I wouldn't be able to even if I wanted to."

Your smile raised in a small way, your eyes turning back up to him in earnest. His expression wa sunreable, but the lowering back of his ears, the limp ease of his body against the side of the couch as his eyes turned over your expression.

"But-I would like to at least make suggestions. For as long as you're here." His eyes turned down to the empty glass, only with a few bits of the clattering of the ice inside of it and the few glups of whiskey left. His voice was graceful, uncertain, tender; not demeaning but almost painfully shy, apologetic and humble, as if something more pure exuected than he felt he deserved to even suggest.

An emotion flashed across your face; one that evidently spoke of something you were hardly aware of-but whatever it was, Bojack must have read it well enough; something flicked in his eyes that wasn't completely unlike an unreadable emotion as his expression turned across yours, though there was something alert about it, an opening to something deeply craved, and punished if not lived without regardless.

"I think I would like that."

His ears turned up further, and even the buzzing of the helicopter went away as his eyes raised up as he met across yours-there was a line of a path of existence that came along with every moment recurring meaning, to make the effort to put in something of a perception or effort to give even the smallest sense of humanity for either of you to be taken away from emptiness and despair, and the both of you were aware of it; and in that moment of that glint of connection was there something ethernal, indescribable, lonely from being out of touch with the rest of ther superficial majority; and resoundingly saitfying and almosttoo much for that very reason.

His voice was evenn somver somver, shy, pure, and pulled you into the moment as he managed a small tender execution of the simple word;

"Yeah?"

"Is there a chance it was a suicide?"

Todd's voice cleared through the tension of the narrative between the two of you as he walked his way down the steps, the same yellow blanket frome earlier casually strewn across his shoulders. A more dry and dim emotion came over Bojack's eyes as he paused and breathed in, turning his body back against the arm of the couch as he leaned his plush body, brawny humble in something craved deeply in every active mode over to Todd. He gave him a slight nod and an indication of his welcome in his dry, detached way as he saw Todd make his way down the steps.

"Good afternoon, Todd."

"I mean it. In between my business deals that I've been keeping organized up there-"

"I know. We were both hearing the majority of it." Bojack's chubby arm eased across the couch, his body slouched across the couch as he looked him over. There was a sickly detachment to his eyes that was now coming over where there had bee that clairty for a moment, and the eccentric sickliness and the flawed perception of life and of what should have been the incredibly simple ordeal of being human was already becoming fractured in your mind again away from the health of that timeless ethernal feeling, all quiet, soothing and like a soft thread of something muted from the rest of the edged world gone for the moment; much like your survival, something you had to grip and thread yourself onto, and the memory of the sensation needing to be enough. "Looks like you've been keeping busy in any location. I guess I won't need to feel guilty about asking you to leave."

"-And while I was looking over all the news articles that they're pumping out about it, and they say she might have been extravagant about what she was feeling last night. Wanted to be able to put on a show for er final moments, you know?

"Extragent suicide?" Bojack's eyes lowered into a dim energy as he leaned his plush body back further, arm leaned behind him on the couch. "I remember hearing what she said last night. She was pretty obvious that she was celebrating something new. Something she thought hadn't been existing previously or-something."

"Yeah, but not especially a surprise in these kind of places."

"I don't think it was a suicide, Todd." His body leaned forward as he rested the glass beside him on the table, the glass clanging as he raised it up to hs snout while he allowed the burning liquor to ease down his lips, his eyes dimmed and in that unreadable dry way as he placed it over to the table. The allure of his humble and soft body turned you over as you watched the curve of his stomach turning over on his lip, and the humble feeling of being bright into something incessantly simple, and yet the only thing that had ever made sense, continued to dry you in. "Though if we keep this up, I think there will be another one following as soon as the two of you are gone."

"I'm not saying that it was a suciide. But if it was, what would be the reason, you know? She was someone who was known for having a great career, seemed a little out of it by the end." Todd walked his way over to the end of the couch until he was standing over the side of the arm chair. Your head turned up as you looked him over, Todd's eyes gleaming over the phone as he scrolled through the conte.t His black hair stick out in multiple directions, eyes sleepy and for once without his neon hat. He seemed as if he had just woken up-the entire apartment had a sleepy defeat to it, even as the sun was rising mid way into the air. "Look. Things that she said, reported by friends and family before it started to get out f hand-and then, the weird performance she put on last night before she-you know."

Your eyes turned over as you looked over the articles.

Bojack;s eyes rolled in a snappy exasperation. He had been ike this once you had walked in, but it seemed like it was only getting worse. That jaded, black discomfort that possessed him more often than not was only increasing. You felt his jaded frustration like it was your own, but it still didn't add closure to your mixed feelings of which were strewn between the presence of one another. You still didn't know if that almost borderline opposite desire to dig and discover rather than being modled by easy surroundings was one he shared or could grow into; he seemed more sarcastic and pessimistic than he was a romantic, even with that tender flowered color you saw in his eyes that came solely from emotion. He was more than likely using you as a portal to dump his discomfort; your experience with relationships and people at their default as a whole was constantly being subdued by experience, rather than something imagined that you felt could alays be a potneitla had people eben different-had you been kinder, smarter, more innovative. He seemed like the last person that was easy to please, despite something that was more tender and almost seemed desperat eto be cradled, something rich and authentic and specific in a way that could only exist when someone had been forced to be humbeld by lfie and existence went on.

You were attracted to him enough that you found you didn't mind, whatevr happened-whateer soothing adn outlandish feeling of something profound, almost beyond earth of comprehension, that had been not only from his presence but also the wonder of the thrown drabs of the silk around the profound beauty of the pig woman as the most serene expression she had ever seen had twilred into the air, and glimemred and threaded by the softness of the light of the sky peeking through the clouds, you found that everything had depth and meaning now, even the bad, that came along with profound depth and wisdom; as you were learning, the only thing that made up sanity, clarity, or a life.

"Let me see that." Bojack grunted as he watched you skimming through the quotes; his hand gripped on yours s he tunrned and looked over to you, gripping the phone out of your hand as he looked over at you with his expression now more dry and matter of fact. "If your'e going to go through these kind of articles, make it easier by someone reading it out loud."

"She can read, Bojack. She's homeless, not illiterate. I mean-I'm assuming, right?" His eyes turned to you in question. Your head raised up as you gave him a small nod.

"It's been a long time since I've taken in anything of quality, though. But I do need ti for survrial now and then to pick up information."

"Yeah, I would imagine. Let me make this easier." Bojack's body as slouched forward as he began to scroll through the article. His eyes darted up as he looked up at Todd, who settled for resting his arm beside the arm of the couch. "It says here that she was talking about something forthcoming. Something-" He winced in focus as he continued to scroll through the article. "Surreal?"

"Keep reading. Gets weirder the more you take in. Whatever she was on, it was not conventional. No one ever knew what to say to her."

"There were a lot of statements she made before she did her large performance, of which she told no one; which in and of itself was unusual for her, her close friends report, as someone who always wanted an audience. Her eyes were often open too wide, and there were red viens around her eyes, and she seemd detached and increaidnly more aggravated the more that time went on a few months before her performance and ehr now deaht"

Todd jumped his body up onto the arm of the couch, your own body coming to ease further into the cushion.

"I read some that said that she kept spewing out weird stuff no one understood. That she couldn't believe she had lived her life with her eyes so closed-how she could have standed to live without with what she was coming to rip open, or discover. Something similar."

'I imagine." Bojack's eyes were concnetraded, sarcastic and stoic as he looked up to meet Todd's wide and insistence ones. He winced as he looked back over the screen. "People who worked with her said she felt the most bittersweet melancholy-like she felt she was being ripped away from anything that had ever made sense to her, that she was gaining some wisdom about every problem that mad eup human misery in any way she had only been suffering before like so many. A joy came over her that was so deep that she hardly knew how to handle it-"

Bojack readjusted as he continued to wince over the phone screen, leaning forward to the table where he had his engraved ashytry sat on the table, taking the stick between his fingers and took another drag of his cigarette, his eyes wncing as the trouble seemed to increase on his features. The smoke that entrailed around him seemed to only increase as it polluted the air,flawed and melancholic and as small as you were-and yet it was enough, more than, right along with his dakr thread that balanced on both annoyance and a red burn out.

"-People who worked with her and loved her waned her to calm down, seeing her joy as something that was joy and instead was transcending over to clear hysteria. Before anyone could come close to calming her down, reports have gathered that she set out to do the most grand height she had done yet toe xpress her joy, making statements that refereed to nothing of coherent, an of even less that was defined as to why she felt the way she did. She felt that it was indescribable, and any attempt for her to share was flattened."

He let out a soft sigh as he continued to scroll through what must have been an oversurgnace of articles, arm wrapped further against the back of the couch, robe enwrapped more around his hips now as he grazed his bakc against the back arm of the chair, now only half dressed as his soft upper torso was exposed in that specific modled unconventional shape where hsi upper torso was small and enclosed, a soft pinch of his lovehandle turning from the middle part of his torso and then over to the plush curve of his stomach, eyes wincing as he turned over the phone and conuiend scrolling witht the hand not cralding his vice that showed off his lack of care for himself. A heavy groan left his lips as he leaned his body more into a slump than sitting upward, legs melting under the table, thick thighs humble and warm with complacency, a layer of film of sweat between them that came along with the sense of overcomfrotabiltiy that came along with being on the couch. There was a speckled dark of appearance wrapping around his expression as he opened his hooded eyes, making even his grumpiness look as if it had a certain kind of inherited comfort to it.

Then again, maybe you were just in love.

"The competition, she would always say a few months before her now arrival of death. I feel like everyting is a terrible and superficial soulless competition, and what I have been gifted has made me believe in something beyond I know, and I can't resist it. What she had seen, felt, experienced she said that it was all too terrible now; it always had been, how everyone wa sa complacent and inhuman failure and malicious. I want to go home, she kept repeatin,g I want to go home, and it is calling to me from somewhere else. I will know when to welcome it when it is here beyond what I can resist-like a sick depressed man who has lost his pace on this earth beyond comprehension, and now turns to alcohol and death."

"Whoa." Bojack's eyes wiedned as he eased his head back. "That would sound like a suicide."

"See? That's what everyone is saying." Todd's pale hands gripped by his legs. "If it is, you're in the clear."

Bojack's eyes glared in that slightly forgiving way of that gentleness he carried whether he meant to or not as he turned his head over to Todd, leaning forward as he grunted and hande dit back to him.

"I'm in the clear anyway, Todd. It's obvious I had nothing to do with it, thank you."

"Uh-huh." Todd's hands gripped over the phone as he held it back beside his chest, eyes turning down as his expression eased across the screen while he continued to scroll through the feed. "I'm sure that's not going to stop them from picking up on it, though."

Though Bojack's eyes flickered into an extent of a dim insecurity, ears flickered back as he leaned his elbow against the side of the couch, there was a sense of control in his eyes, or at least attempt of it, as he leaned his body back onto the side of the couch, and the dryness that you were now convinced came from someone that was trying to walk a tightipe of an attempt of turing away from emotional devesation was something that was drawing you in and both exhausting you at the same time, as it was with two damaged people, or two people as a whole in general, that were trying to follow the natural want of escaping pain.

"Are you planning on stay here throughout the night, Todd?"

"Why?" His eyes turned up from where he was pouting as he looked over the feed, black eyerbows furrowed as he continued to dart his eyes across the feed. Your body kept firmly curled within yourself, hands pressing against your arms as you leaned your body back the white rags dressing around your hips as you eased your body downward, eyes flickered down in thought through the passing turn of the situation. "Is there some sort of plan about what you'll do with yourself after you're gone?"

Bojack's eyes turned up as he pouted while looking up to Todd. "What do you mean by that?"

Todd eased up his eyes in thought, casual with a toothy grin poking out of his mouth. "C"mon, Bojack. What are you going to do once you push me out?"

"The same thing I have always done. I'll take the quiet and try to enjoy it. I don't know why you're pushing this."

Rather than having a jaded response of something edged and jabbing, there was a quiet exhaustion to his tone as he spoke, and it reflected in the emptiness of his eyes as he spoke it.

"Uh-huh. Because I know that this house is known for being great for people knowing how to carry themselves and make themselves happy without feeling some inherent existence tragedy for it."

Bojack's eyes winced as his eyes flared further. "Todd-"

Todd eased his thighs off of the edge of the arm of the couch, keeping his eyes on the feed of his phone. "And what about the woman? She's been keeping you busy, hasn't she?"

"That-" Embarrassment flew across Bojack's face, and then an exhaustion of panic as he turned his head over to you, wincing as he did so as his teeth poked while he gave an abrupt breath. His ears lowered as his eyes squinted and met yours; or tried to, but you kept your hands down, looking and studying with your fingertips eased across the spaces of your hands as your eyes eased down on your hands. "-That is her choice, whether she wants to stay here or not. Especially with all of this going around."

His voice was still somber and mature, and edged with somethin conflicted, rich and raw; the titanic and the impossible rarity that came along with even the suggestion of profound emotional bonding and the soft details that came with truly loving and living with someone in all of their complex messy nature that came along with being human and with the dynamic of existence. Your eyes blinked slowly, then you turned your head up as your eyes turned and met across his; eyebrows furrowing as your expression turned over his, detached and questioning, exhausted and fogged over, as is what came with survival mode.

"You're serious?"

Bojack shrugged, eyes wincing as his expression looked you over; the ass, cocky, humble and clumsy humanity that he kept with him fully executed into all the bundle of what made up someone who was irreparably and deeply flawed in an erratic, lying, flawed and manchild way and yet drawn to the rhythm of one another as he looked you over.

"With all this going on, it would be the least I could do to invite you over and bring you in for a little while. Throwing you out onto the streets with all that out there going on would be inhuman."

You paused as your hands began to thread and weave across the fabric that was inside of the spaces of your fingertips, threading them through your palms as you looked Bojack over in his stumbling and insecure insistence. You swore there was something about him that kept getting more handsome, lovable, something that, at least for the impossible amount of time you were spending trying just to do what felt like the impossible of having an agreement with reality that was bearable, an rhythm with the idea that any bearable or worthwhile fulfillment could only come from yourself, an impossible and disorienting realization, drew you in as all else began to fall away-or maybe it was the natural attraction that came along with just happening to memorize someone in all of their details and flaws of what made up their air and disposition-the carves of his face seemed stronger, more sharp, as if the cynical wisdom he carried was modeling him into a sharper curve of a man without even trying; the reflection of life and his experience as it were and not for what people wished for it to be; hard, but true, and the way he carried it mature.

"Is that-something that you would be interested in?" Bojack's bottom eyelids winced as he looked you over, ears lowered as his eyes guided across your expression, shy and uncertain; well intended, and oddly lovable if only for the obvious fact of just how much of at a loss he was, and the hoe that came along wth the small but needed sense of individuality. "I can make my bed, if you'd like. You can stay there for the night-" He shook his head in thought. "-Or maybe even longer than that, if you want. If that's something you would feel comfortable with. I obviously don't want to put you out."

Todd's eyes turend as he looked between the both of you, face paralzed in inquiry, lip pouted as he eased himself off of the side of the couch entirely, expressing flickering down over to his phone now and the-not doubt for at least a little bit of a relief of distraction for himself.

"My answer hasn't changed." Your tone was even, gentle, much like your focus in his eyes as you felt the rhythm of what came along with having a natural want as humans to escape the neurotic way of human nature and to instead focus on one another and the concentration of taking care of one another.

His ears flicked up, Bojack's eyes glimmering into a light as he looked you over. "No?"

"My answer has been the same for the majority of my life, with everything. All I ever wanted was to escape pain." Your eyes turned to the side as you kept your palm eased against your cheek, turning your eyes downard, and you gave a slight breath of a sickly amusement. "I could never manage that-and everyday I just take what I can get and keep my head down, tail between my legs, other people around me being able to see that I'm doing as such and treating me as worse-and I know they're right."

"You could always come work as an assistant at my company, if you want." Todd's voice cut through where your reflection, his hand was currently eased on a video where his fingertip was hovering over where there was a soft static blaring from the audio as it eased from his phone screen. "We could always use someone serving a position."

"No, don't make her work." Bojack's eyes turned up to Todd as he gave him a dry flair of his eyes, ears lowering down. "She dosen't need to be carrying around a bunch of plastic items in a box just for the sake of having a couple of cheap bucks thrown at her for the day so she can buy a cheap dinner."

"I'm just saying, if she wants to, she can always have a position somewhere. That's something, right?" Todd's eyes turned as he darted over you in question, balancing on the balls of his feet playfully as he looked you over. "I could give you a raise if you want instantly-maybe twenty dollars extra for being Bojack's house guest, if you want. Comes with compensation for being here as a someone who knows what it's like."

"Giving her a crapshoot job won't be nearly enough to get her a place to stay off of the streets. You didn't take that into consideration that she needs more of a build up to get from here to there, right?" Bojack's eyebrows raised up, arm rested behind the couch.

"Bojack, Bojack, look, I know you're trying to intervene, but I am asking her. If she wants to-"

"No." Your fingertips were curling restlessly against the rags, and your hands turned down as you eased your fingertips against the fabric while you turned your head down. "It wouldn't change anything. And it's not your fault." Your turned your eyes over with insistence to Todd, his eyes dim as his expression pouted as he looked you over. "And it's not your fault, and you don't have to feel bad about it. Thank you for suggesting it anywhere."

The video on Todd's phone was increasing, a sound of weeping coming from it as it eased and executed through the air through the occasional empty space that was left over from the helicopters. Bojack winced as his ears lowered while he looked over the phone dangled in Todd's hands.

"What are you watching? Is that the woman?"

"Yeah." Todd's eyes turned down to it, expression insecure and unreadable as his eyes turned across the screen; the sound of the shrill whimpering increased, and he gave a small shrug as he turned and slide the phone over to you when Bojack curled his hand forward in an indication for Todd to show him. Bojack's hands took the phone as he leaned back, eyes turning over as he gazed over at it with his ears lowered. Your body shouldered further next to him, eyes turning over as you looked over the screen. Todd's voice was slightly more somber than the lighter way of which he spoke as he said; "Looks like she was having a hard time enough that someone decided to record it."

The pig woman's voice continued to wail as it trailed out from the phone; Bojack's eyes winced as he looked it over while he eased his plush body against the couch. The camera zoomed in on her face, which was twisted into an odd form of grief, her eyes squnted and winced as her mouth was turned into a wrinkled and wailing call as her head was snapped forward, body rocking.

"It's been all day." A man's voice; low and concerned, trailed over the where her body was hunched forward with her arms encircled against her torso, her eyes closed as her body was rocking. The person holding the camera began to make further advances forward, her expression twisted forward as her arms were cramped and her thighs rocking against where she was siting in the middle of her metal chair, head curled forward. "You don't have to do this. We've already talked with several people who have already discussed your career and your choices, and we've all come down to the conclusion that this would put you in danger. You must know what the people are like out there."

"I've been feeling the mood all day." Her bottom lip trembled; just enough of something Bojack could catch as he camera continued to ease across her expression. Your body curled further as you looked it over, Bojack's eyes winced as he looked you over while your body eased further over to the phone. Her pink hand came to rest across the trembling and frozen muscles on her features, her head turned forward as her eyes were winced as she gazed in front of her, curved lip trembling as her body curled inward. "Something incredible, astounding; a celebration of how flawed things are between them, but I've never felt anything like it. I need to be able to celebrate it, to know it; the joy is bursting. I've never known anything like it. I need to send out the message."

A soft murmur that came from the man;s shoulder recording her; he must have been talking to another crew member that was behind him as he talked lowly to the other people surrounding the pig woman, her hands encircled against the fabric that was in her palms and beside her hand as she ket her hands beside the fabric and continuously kept it pressed beside the strain on her face.

"You know what people are like out there. If you draw too much attention to yourself, even if the social suciide won;t be enough, then even just the idea of putting yourself out there to that degree is going to end up throttling you even further if someone ends up drawing too much attention to you; the wrong person-"

A red, raw flash of anger came into her eyes as she snapped her head over to the man that was attempting to reason with her.

"The person I decided to dedicate myself to is the wrong person. Everyone is-most around me. I feel it. Compared to this feeling of this grounded something-its not even joy, because even joy can be comprehended into something that is coherent, but this is beyond that." The camera zoomed in on the woman as she kept her eyes turned forward, the trail of the massacre eased down her cheek as she turned her head upward, her bottom lip treamored and twisted. "I need to be able to execute it. Celebrate it. There's no choice; to not would be a crime. It feels like something that has possessed me, taking me, forced me to be apart of it; and I've never felt more relieved to be its suitor."

"Your husband has been waiting-I know you don't speak to him often"

"Goddamn my husband." Her body curled up as she snapped her body up from where she was sitting against the front of the chair beside her; her body turned up, as did the angle of the camera; Bojack winced as his eyes widned and ears flared back as her body abruptly turned itself up, fire in her eyes that was caught through the shakiness of the camera as the man stepped back. Her voice was silent, edged, treamored as she snapped her head over to the men; there must have been about two or three from the murmuring that was behind the camera. "That was flawed, terrible, abrasive and exhausted and demanding with all the small minute ways we gave each other that constant fight-not literally, not with words or any direct singular event, but through the constant ways we made all the small little misudnerstandings and judgments and emptiness that granted one another into this sleepy complacency-this constant fight that didn't come from a direct experience but through something as common as constant misunderstanding." Her lip, carved into bumps and a fight snapped over to the man as her eyes continued to wince with a tremor of her expression. Bojack's pout increased as he winced and eased his body back further, turning his ineusitive eyes over to you and back down to the phone where the pig woman's voice was still thrill with the wobbling of her toen. She stepped forward, expression encased into a maddening scrowl; the man in front of her stepped back, giving an abrupt comment, or the attempt of it, before the pig woman managed an abrasive shout of; "Damn you!"

"Who are these people that you keep talking about?"

"I don't know what it is. It's something that came over me-" Her feet began to step back, tripping over her dress as she began to trembling and walk around the space that surrounded her in what looked like a small closet before the show that she had practiced through the draining seams of the silk that surrounded her as she pace. Her eyes flared up as she snapped her head over to the small crowd, and an almost eerie depseraiton came across her face as something melted, and she began to trip over her feet as she rushed her way over to them, her expression scowling into something that seemd like the most dark gleam of mercy as she rushed her way over to them, kneeling herself down in front of them. "It's like something was opened inside of me, or in front of me, like a way of being except for beyond death that would have been the greatest blessing of whatever it was that I could have hoped to have; it's not mine, but its something so surreal, bittersweet, if only for the rarity of it and how unlikely it would have been for it to have ever existed at -" An anger flashed across her features, turning into a scowl as she snapped her head over her shoulder while she gripped her hand against it, snapping her hand around the fabric as she did so while she ripped it acros sher hand. "Art, performance, anything people do to distract themselves from the way things should be-things should be as pure and as present, human as much as they feel now. Do you understand me? It's all a waste of people distracting themselves from how we've destroyed one another-I need to tell people that I've found the light of it."

Her eyes gleamed, maddened and wih a crazed insistence as she kneeled herself in front of the men in front of her, hands gripped across the men that stood in front of her, her expression twisted into a sickening insistence; the emotion on her face seemed treambred and deepend with a maddening insistence as she kept her hands gripped across the man's trousers.

"I found it. The secret." Her voice treamored, right alone with the tone of the quivering ease of her lip as her pupils became dialed, profound in insistence as her hands contuiend to grip against the man; the camera turned over the look in her eyes that seemd enlightnted, if there was such thing as being crazed as something that was enlightenment. "And I"m going to tell everyone about it. I have to. Anyone would felt it would."

The camera turned away from the eerie look of the bulge of her features, the man holding it talking lowly to the other men beside him as he talked to them with a low tremor under his breath. Bojack's arm eased back against the couch, his eyes turned to you as his expression roamed across your body, your body curled against the couch as you watached with a red egd expression, and not for the numerous time did he feel the desire to hold you, and for you to be held.

"Get up.' The man's voice was insistent, blunt, and the pig woman's voice treamored as she snapped her head down, stumbling over her words as she did so as she gave a quick nod, shaky and detached.

"I would-I would-but I feel it, right now. Something aligned. They've found one another-things are coming to clarity as they should be. The form of complex human life and connection, the way of which everyone craves it." Her hands gripped against across the man's trousers, who took to turning over his shoulder as he camera became shaky and unfocused on anything. The pig woman's eyes dialed into something unreadable and detached as she swallowed visibility, pupils detached and fogged.

"We're going to take you to your husband." The maddening glint inside of the pig woman's eyes turned up as her pupils dilated into a small panic, her head snapped upard as her eyes gleamed while there was a small dilation in her eyes; her voice gave a sudden grip and hitch out of her voice, and suddenly did a maddening as she gave a sudden shriekf through her lip as a man reached out a hand and abruptly grasped it by her neck; her shriek of defaicne was coming otu as an abrupt squeal and a thrill loud enough that it caused Bojack's eyes to wince as he grimanced and eased his head backward from where he was watching the vidoe, ears flickered back as he watched the way she contuiend to flash her body across the men that kept his hand gripped across hr neck as she yanked her forward, her eyes widening as she was pushed forward from where she had been kneeling in front of the ground. The sequel that left her lips was enough to cut through the air of where she had been kneeled down a moment before as her throat choked while her body was gripped upward, her head snapped back as the man kept his hands gripepd inside her collar.

"I've spent my entire life in a goddamn lie, do you hear me? Everyone has-we've all settled for this flawed and superficial natrue of people with people who have always long since been entirely gone. I can't go back to the lakc of purity-don't you dare try to control me! Everyone has been so dead already, suffering to settle for people that were never rich or pure to begin with-let me go! I found two people that carved their own meaning-we do anyway, but people would rather turn to want of suffering with the way we mold reality. For one I found someone else who didn't-let me go! It's all so easy, but we've never figured out even half og it-stop it!"

Her body twisted as her torso kicked back, and her eyes kept widened in that maddening and small pulp in her eyes as her mouth twisted while she was kept turned back through the expanse of the small space; her throat choked back as the camera began to become increasingly more shaken and turning against her body as her torso as curved back, and the sounds of her shouting and squealing increased as it cut through the air, her head turnd back as her ears were flown downward through the quick minute flashing that came across from the shaking of the camera.

"Jesus." Bojack's body turned back, eyes turning over the camera into that disbelieving pout across his features; The screaming increased, right along with the disorientation of the camera and the turning of the man's attempt of recording; until there was a sudden cut off, and the video abruptly stopped, the white ply button sat in the middle of the screen. Bojack's eyes flicked over to Todd, who managed a shrug as he leaned forward while he took the phone out of Bojack's hands.

"Very bright show she put on there. Before the one that got her killed, I mean. Quite extravagant."

"She had that look in her eyes." You spoke the words sullenly, detached with soft consideration as your hands were curled across her lip, eyes dimmed and detached. Bojack's eyes as he turned and watched you, eyes turning over you in question. "Someone who saw people who saw people." Your eyes turned down a syou readjusted the fabric beside your hands, giving a breath as you rolled your shoulders. "I think the problem was that she didn't have it herself."

Bojack closed his eyes, ears lowered as he reset his shoulders; there was a soft chill around his skin at the words she had spoken, and his eyes were dim and empty as he turned his head back over to Todd.

"Is that what she was like before all this?"

"Apparently it was recorded the day before. The were trying to convince her out of it-said that it wouldn't be healthy for her to just run after things without grounding herself and trying to make sense of it frist."

"They were right." Bojack's voice was tremendous, reflective in that emotional intelligent way as he turned his head over his shoulder, eyes wincing as he looked over the window in front of him as his eyes turned over the window, ears lowered back. The helicopters had successful taken the body; there was only one left, hovering beside the height of the pike, one man talking with a hand gripped against his speaker device as he stepped over from the first front seat and over to the back, turning his hands over the seats and the area, as if attempting to organize whatever understanding of what they needed to do next last as best as he was able, the humming detached and challenging and distant, but ultimately something that was a reminder that the cut through of someone in the pig woman's eyes that were cut directly to his was something that felt howlingly more dedicated to himself as his own person more than he would have liked. He winced as he readjusted, body turning back as his arm rested behind the couch. "I wonder if all that fight she put up with for whatever it was she felt she was fighting for was worth it. If fighting for something at all changes anything."

"Well-" Todd shrugged, almost too casually given the context of the situation, shrugging as he placed the phone into his large hoodie pocket, other pale hands coming to grip by the blanket he had lazily thrown over his shoulders as he readjsuted. "Just another one of those loonies that couldn't just take the boredom of life for what it was, right?"

Bojakc grunted, his eyes unreadable and detached as his eyes, wincing and puffed, turned over to the window beside him with his stomach plush and poked out.

"Yeah. Too bad she couldn't just settle for being an alcoholic like the rest of us."

"Not what I meant."

Bojack's head turned over to Todd, eyes lowered as his ears turned back as he kept himself leaned against the couch. "But you were expecting that to be the general idea of what you were referring to, I imagine."

"I don't know. Sorry if that was triggering at all-I know you can have a tendency to start off into this weird complex spiral that becomes more weird and worse the more you feed into it."

"I was already in that general headspace-but, your insistence of looking up the small details of a woman that was kileld in front of my balcony while I try to just make sense of every day to day existence was also something that has kept me in that general headspace, yes."

"Well, sorry. Just thought that it would be good to stay informed, you know?"

'On what? The decreasing mental health of the eccentric performances of people who've gone insane? I wanted to keep this place at least somewhat civil these next couple of days for as long as I had a house guest."

"I'm going to go and start up some more trend of my business today. I think you should keep her with you. Retty straightforward." Todd's hands gripped on the side of his towel as he made his way to the front door; there were several boxes stacked in front of it, and he leaned forward as his hands gripped across the cardboard boxes, grunting as he balanced it as got himself up. His head turned as he looked th both of you over while he made his way over to the large expanse of Bojack's grey doors, kicking out one foot as he eased his foot over to it and began to ease it up, quirky allowing the box in his hand to kept balanced as he looked between the both of you. "I can still keep that offer for you to come work for me, if you want. I mean-I don't have the means of being able to give you enough to live, but-it's not nothing, you know?"

"She said she woundn't, Todd."

"I'll stay here." You interjected, your fingertips curling against the sheets still as a subcicnious menas for grounding. Todd seethed back at the abrasive word of Bojack, and his eyes dared down as he began to make his way out the door, stepping his way halfway outside-his eyes landed on yours, and Bojack's eyes kept as dry and full of his own heavy lidded annoyance as he looked Todd over.

"Ok. Let Bojack tke care of you, if you somehow think that's a good idea."

Bojack closed his eyes, expression squinting as he eased his head forward in a heavy frustration. "Todd-"

"Just remember that peace comes from yourself, ok? I learned that the hard way, clinging otno situations that i though the peace of would make me feel more whole in myself." His eyes lowered, and he gave a shrug as he began to step his way out further. Bojack kept his plush arm sullenly leaned behind your back, as much as he felt he had the right to-which was very little.

"Wish words coming from you. Why save them for the last minute?"

Todd shrugged, tht bashful look on his considerate features as he turned his eyes down to the box he had in his hand.

"Just thought she deserved to hear something positive, is all." His nave eyes turned as he looked you over, and your body curled in on yourself further, eyes flittered downward as your hands kept gripped on your palms while you kept your body curled against the satin. "You can always call me, if you need to, in case you change your mind about he money. Does she have my number, Bojack?"

"I have his number." You cleared your throat as your body began to radjust before Bojack could respond in that conflicted and uncertain way in return; his eyes turned as he looked over at you with an inquiring and soft look of apology as he looked you over. You gave Todd a quick nod a you raised your lip and met his own pout and uncertain naive eyes. "Thank you, anyway. I think I'll be fine here for now."

"Good." Todd's eyes turned over to the window as he kept his feet on the side of the door, and then, with an awkward grunt of his shoulders did he make his way out from the open doors, grunting to himself as he made his way outward while the door closed behind him.

His head turned as he looked over to where your sullen, tired, bittersweet eyes were turning as you looked him over, giving him a soft raise of your lip; bittersweet and in your own world, but with want to appease Todd, and Bojack found himself profoundly drawn to the pain that was drenched in your eyes, and the amount of endless lessons he felt he could learn from it; and from the undeniable fact that he felt like he was in natural rhythm of it entirely in a profound fashion. He winced as his ears splayed to the side as he gave a breath, eyes winced as his ears turned down while he felt his heard thud at what he wanted to ask from you; and insistining and executing it an even further degree of question.

'Do you want me to make you a bed?" Bojack began to raise himself up as he looked you over, one hand curled on his hip as he began to walk through the living room. You were curled in on yourself, fully disclosed within yourself as your head turned while you watched him make his way to the counter.

"Are you sure you want me to sleep here tonight?"

"Am I sure?" His eyelids dimmed as he looked you over while he teased a hand beside a cup, then gave a breath as he walked over to the sink and began to fill it with water, eyes dim and expression puffy and protruded. "I didn't offer it over for nothing, so-yes." He winced as he turned his eyes down, ears splayed out as the age on his features showed through his expression as he looked down. "You'll find that if nothing else, whatever happens around here, that everything will be expressed openly, and straightforward." He gestured his arm in front of him sharply. "That's really the only way to be. God knows that everywhere else, there's nothing but lack of communication or baggage." He began to walk his way around the counter, eyes turning over to you insquinvetly as he rested his back behind the couch, the cold water placed in his chubby palm. He winced as he looked down at it, then turned his eyes as he met yours; there was a hesitant flair in the action, bottom eyes winced as he met the delicacy of your body, fragile and hidden by the sheets. "Do you want this?"

"Of course I do." Your hands began to become untangled from the sheets, and Bojack felt his lip raise into a small smile as he felt your hands ease across the glass of it, and your body curled in as you pressed the glass firmly by your body. You took a sip, and Bojack felt an odd, almost artistic appreciation come over him at observing you. "You know, it's funny."

Bojack began to raise himself off the couch, hand leaned forward from behind him as he lookd you over while he raised himself up. "What?"

"I've come to discover that life is a strange balance between either appreciating being alive and fearing death, or fering behing alive and longing for death. Both are exhustiing." Your eyes eased down as you tapped your fingertips across the glass. "But for the first time in a long time, I don't feet that way."

"No?"

"No." Your lips rested against the cold of the glass, turning your lips forward while it rested beside it after a small sip. "Not at all. For now, I just fell present, unattached to any narrative other than the way things are right now-completle clairty with what is now." Your eyes, edged on the red of the brims of them, turned as you looked up at Bojack and gave him a delicate raise of you lip; one that made hi feel both overtaken with emotion, and a sense of home so specific to the story he had as a person and the way you made him feel that it almost felt impossible to him to accept himself for as he was or the earth as it was, rather than the surrerality that looking into your eyes gave him. "Life humbles everyone at some point. Thank you fro giving me a little…respite away from how much it does, in my case."

"You can have as much respite from anything you want." His voice was tired, but inviting as he indicated his hand to you awkwrdly, but with insistence. You gave a nod, the dynamic humble and famailail as you curled furher into yourself; there as something incredible forigivng and familiar, safe and pormsied in thee energy between one another; something that ws balanced into two humble, lost, uncertain people. "There's nothing that happens here of-well, much of anything, unless I want there to be-so, you know."

His eyes turned down as he gave a shrug, timidly, uncertain, and his fingertips eased across his shirt as he kept his eyes down. You readjusted as you continued to sip the water for a moment, the silence passing between the space as questionable and with as little answer as much as anything Bojack has ever wondered about what he had needed. The helicopter was gone now, leaving nothing for the time being except for the piked steak that was left behind in its isolation, isolated and left without human concern through the way ti stood upright and hallowed from everything around it, left alone now that there was anything of quality to keep it from not being occupied by the soulless majority now that there was nothing left o be brought from it for their immediate entertainment.

"You don't have to make it for me."

Bojack blinked abruptly, head turned down as he looked you over, teeth winced as the muscles on his face furrowed; he had been in a detached fog only a moment previously. "What?"

"The bed." Your hand readjusted across the glass as you turned your eyes down to it, then leaned forward and pressed the half empty glass beside the table. Bojack's teeth poked as he looked at you uncertainty as you straightened your body up from where you sat among the rags. "I'd like to just lie down, exactly how things are, if that's alright."

"Oh. Yeah-sure." Bojack's eyes turned down as his hand gripped across the side of the white, muddled fluff of his robe that felt and smelled of complacent and of the minute smells that came from his nervousness and of being alive and of the turning of processing and emotions, especially from the last few hours; the film of sweat from his skin as he had been by you overtook him especially, and it reminded him of how muddled, unsvory, unconventional the bed sheets were. He gave another shrug as his hand gripped by his arm. "I mean-if you don't mind the entanglement from the night before, and all that. I haven't had a chance to clean anything up since it's been the way it has. From last night, I mean."

"Exactly. I was a part of it too, you know." Delicately, clumsy, did you begin to raise yourself up from where you were entangled against the sheets, and Bojack stepped back on instinct as he rubbed his arm with his hand while he looked you over, the sheets in your body entangled as you eased yourself upward, giving him a raise of your lip that reached up the sickly weakness of your eyes and deepend the blush on your cheeks; delicate, clumsy, and with that odd grounding of motherly nature to you. Bojack contuiend to rub his arm as he looked you over. "I don't mind."

"Well, then-sure. Of course you can." His voice, much like his air, was small, inviting; tender and romanticism in an odd endearing way he held when the loudness of the world meant to trigger began to fall away. He gave a small raise of his teeth as he began to walk away from the couch and over to the gray steps, and you gripped your hands beside the gray blankets as you began to follow him, eyes apologetic and uncertain as you followed him over to the stairs. inviting, an inherent self awareness that was in his raspy voice that made everything he say seemed almost chokingly true in its authentic nature to his emotion and the reflection of the inherent heaviness of being in such flawed species-but also utterly despairing himself at the way he tried to carry himself; successfully, all things considered, but hardly ith any sense of being as soothing as much as it should have been in the constant chaos of human psychological states on an indifferent earth, such as the way it had almost been comical to constantly have a deranged sense of reality for humanity when it came to its chaotic way of interacting with themselves and existence; the empty choas of coping with themselves and day to day life.

"You can, uh-like I said, stay for as long as you would like." Bojack's ears flicked as he made his way up the stairs, and in the emptiness of the middle of the sunset afternoon was his expression traced against the light as he made his way up the stairs, ears splayed as he eased himself upward. "I know that with the way things are in general, but especially out there, there's no promise for anything. As long as I have some empty space for you to stay, which I definitely do, I don't see any reason why it would be a problem for either of us for you to stay for a while."

A heavy truth laced his words that you knew came from unwitting and unwilling suffering-the softness in the hitch of his strained voice was present and told you all you needed to know, and there was almost a sense of envy to his authenti and rich humanity that came along with complex individual experience.

The sharp tracing of his stature of his face, complemented by the soft middle of his stomach, completed with those occasional dark eyebags and that tire exeroation in his contradiction of magic eyes, the dark mane of his hair that traced his diamond snout-it all seemed like a sign towards who he was; sharpened with a deepend intelligence that had brought him to dakr more than light, rendering him in an attractive knowing of the inherent human conscious, complemented by his soft desire to know he was worthy of validation he knew he couldn't live without. He could live without love, and he had trained himself to. So he settled for the next best thing; validation through soft extreneal offerings such as thing.

There was almost too much to allure, too much to tell him, that it almost made you not able to speak it at all. It was a bitter irony, and whether or not you had the will to churn through all of it, or whether it would tie your tongue, you didn't know.

You took a breath as you straightened your body upward while your hand gripped your elbow as you turned the corner up on the second floor, your eyes following Bojack as he made his way down the hallway gray and large while it opened to the even larger architecture of the large opening leading to the expanse of the roomy bedroom, all of which executed his wealth. You turned your attention to the junk on the table beside the gray bed-various different small bottles of liquor that Bojack had drunk to take the edge off, various different tissue paper that was tossed beside the disarray of the bedside table that came from where you could vaguely remember the almost impossible soft touch of Bojack's hand and his soft minute timid breahts of his own concern as he had tapped it on your cheek while you had trid to rest-seemigingly caught up in pressing away the junk of the dirt and the scratches across your skin without destusbing you. You half considered moving the various disarray of junk around, if only for an act of mercy for him later on in the night; the thought was fleeting, and with the surprising sentiment that you felt that you wanted to give him something in turn in a dynamic of appreciation you had never quite experienced.

"Well, this is it." Bojack sighed as he eased his hand onto it, pulling black he crumple of the grey sheets as he eased his plush body onto it, easing himself downward as his hand swept through the sheets. He winced as his eyes turned up to you, looking over you in inquiry. "If there's anything you need, don't hestiant."

"Where will you be?" You walked inside, hand clasped against the side of the sheets as you made your way inside, eyes turning as you looked him over. His eyelids lowered, turning his head over to the window as he gave a shrug.

"Outside. Smoking, probably. Very glamorous ways of spending the time."

"But ti takes the edge off, right?"

"Astoundingly."

He reached up a leg as he rested it beside his other leg, eyes following you as you made your way inside, easing yourself down onto the sheets. "You sure you'll be ok in here for a little while? I can stay if you feel like anything will come up."

"Did you find the photo?"You kept your voice lowered, soft, inquiring, your eyes turning as you looked him over, your hips coming to ease through the grey sheets as your hand clasped against the sheets.

Bojack didn't miss a beat, though the slight twitch of his ears gave away some emotion. "No. I don't want to talk about it again." He winced as he eased his body back, his brawny hand gripping on the side of his leg. "Honestly, it's for the best, and it dosen't entirely feel like a cociddence that something that I spent enough time of my life passng by and looking at occurred at around the same time you came. Not that -believe in stuff like that, of course not." His fingertip scratched the side of his neck as he turned his eyes downward in thought. "Just that I-uh-it's been feeling good, is all." He turned his eyes to you as he watched the way you were alreadng taking to entanggling yourself around the gray sheets, your hips turned over and through the sheets as you began to ease yourself into them, turning your body back and through the sheet as you eased your body through the entanglement. "What I'm trying to say more than anything else is that I'm glad you're here-and, thank you for being that."

Understanding flooding you. You wanted to see every part of him, though it came with bitterness every time it did, if only for how oddly heavy adn demanding it was. Your bac shouldered across the pillow as you raised i behind your back, his ehad turning as he looked over you with a wince of his eyes and ears lowered as you leaned your back against the couch; he looked especially troeuebdl, compelling with the sunlight of the middle of that off empty disoentining part of the world of the afternoon that seemed executed only for whatever it seemed to want to execute in its message meant only for you; isolated, compelling.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Just stop bringing it up. Please."

You lips pressed against one another as you turned your hand down to the threads of the blankets while you pulled the further and up to your chest, trying to focus to an almost pointed degree on the task as to inquire towards your curiosity towards him, the layers of what he promised in his melancholy; humble, isolated, alone, lovable.

Even the morning sweat smell that he had in his warm body was enticing-it reminded you of people and the messiness of existing that came along with the authenticity of being alive-really, one of the only themes you craved, as you yourself being one of them. The cigarettes he smoked were caught onto everything in the kitchen and throughout the bedroom-it latched onto the countertops, the fridge, the cups that were messily thrown into the sink, and now in the bedroom where his blue sweater and grey unndershirt and the neon pants under it were tossed to the edge of the bed where it had been replaced in his messy vulnerability. He was everywhere-and you found that, something that was sure to be an unpopular opinion, you didn't mind in the slightest.

You didn't know how much you were allowed to tread the fragile water of Bojack's ego, so you pulled the sheets further up your chest, breathing in as you turned your eyes over and gave him a quick quip of your lip.

"I'll sleep fine. I think what I need right now mroe than anything else is just a few hours, days if I can, of just letting things in."

"I'm sure." Bojack took his hand off of her leg, raising himself up, and turned as he looked you over. "Comfortable? Feeling safe?"

"You have the rare energy of someone who learned how to navigate the way the world is and found a acenterment and stability in yourself almost impossible to find. I'll enjoy taking it in and leaning off of it for while I"m here." Your body began to rest beside the back of the bed as you leaned back, giving him a raise of your smile. "That is a rare thing."

He gave you a tired, detached, albeit content raise of his lip as he watched you.

"I am certain that whatever it is I achieved that you feel, it's more than likely from yourself." His eyes were detached, dim, as he kept one hand tenderly and adorably gripped by the side of his white robe as he began to walk his way to the door; his eyes were detached and emotionally fogged over in that way of someone who had long since become practiced with the natural depth it gave someone who knew what it felt like to be completely alone. Your eyes turned as you watched his stout but graceful form walk to the open cracked door, the light of the morning peking through the white shades pulled over that had never been properly closed.

You were feeling out of it yourself; though you knew you shouldn't have, you had consumed some of the alcohol and even a bit of the secondhand weed smell Todd carried with him more than you had let on. Bojack hadn't even noticed-as wise as his words could be, he could just as well be an unhinged, self absorbed manchild who didn't know what he wanted at all, but you found the lack of observation something you took comfort in for the sake of your own sliver of dignity, as well as the fact that it was one of the countless flaws that made him endearing that entirced you to him as it appealed to your own disorteinted humanity,

You were sure that he wasn't going to notice much of anything for as long as he was caught up in his own crisis. You hadn't quite figured out how to tell him that you cared about him, and you knew that when it came to someone who was as reckless and as entangled into the lack of rules of the emotions of life in the times of his insecurity at its peak, both profoundly considerate and in denial at the same tme, and someone who was as caught up in their actions more so than words, the only way that you could have communicated was as physically as possible. It was the only language he would hear-and perhaps the only way you could speak yourself in the middle of a foggy brain that had perceive too much.

You pressed your body against the side of the bed up in front of you, feeling the way that his own scent, which was mostly one of various drugs, left over food, musty scents and sweat, and various different other smells of other people and animals that you couldn't even begin to imagine instantly greeted your senses. I wasn't necessarily the smell that most would have considered pleasant, but for you, it was only a welcome that you felt that indescribable sense of home, contreatd, all other ways of exsted and its pormsie to chaos gone entirley for the moment.

You allowed your body to sink into the sheets as the mattress creaked under you, reaching out a hand as you wrapped the sheets in front of you as they covered your legs. The fabric was rubbing against your body, and you gripped your hand against the silky fabric of the pillow as you leaned your arm back to grip it-you could feel some loose hairs of his coarse main greet your fingertips, and that made your body shiver in a continued longing.

You didn't think Bojack, in his troubled preoccupied mind, would care if you rested here-based off of the various scents of other bodies, it seemed as if plently had gotten the same experience. You were exhausted,, and as you begin to feel the soft, used sheets caress your body, felt Bojack's gentle mark of existence and of the stories and actions of what he had done that made up who he was-the most precious kind, the kind where he slept in the quiet hours of the night, possibly the only time those troubles didn't dig at his mind, you found that sleep and that odd blunt peace his lanagauge gave you began to overcome you.

You felt enwrapped by those very same arms that seemed as though they themselves were the very definition of some sort of broken and desperate longing that you experienced and knew all too well as you turned your head to the side, resting your head beside the white pillow as your cheek rested under it, hand coming under your skin as the musty smell of him came over you to the sweetest emobidment of his physical presence melded in with the sitmualtion of how he carried himself overcame you, and as you turnd your head beside the pillow next to the empty one for now, you remembered how sweet and trouebeled he had looked, even in the peace of sleep; his eyes closed and his breath raspd and mumbled in an incredibly rich mind, handsome features worn by wrinkles and bloat of weight and in full chceeks-and under that, and the most important of all, the deep wear underneath it of something that was profoundly and deeply lovable-to the degree that it was demanding like a fist, nd as complex as anny given form of life alone.

For once, that energy was matched, though the sweetness of something sof and familial came over you, and you closed your eyes as your cheek rested against the same pillow where, despise everything you had heard to invalate emotion, the endurance you had as a person reache dits peace as your body and emotional reached a pinnacle of profound wamrth while memoziring the dark cut under weary eyes.

You heard a flcikr of a thumb, and a rasped and awkward swear, and with that did you eyes begin to fall fall; heavy, and worn, and full of thought and the promise of trail of emotion to follow.

𐂃𐂃𐂃

OOOOO

"Are you in here?"

That same low, masculine and inviting voice shelved its way from the side of the door. Your eyes opened from where they had been dry with sleep a moment earlier, gradually blinking open with a fog as you raised sleep up from your eyes.

"Jesus."

You readjusted as you started to come into yourself and consciousness your body readjusting as you began to come fully into yourself, though with that instant dry and muddled stagance that surrounded you that made up the vast emptiness of the house, with the dry and bitter feeling of your throat and mouth as you came back fully into consciousness and the fogginess of your eyes, you instantly became aware of the strain of your existence.

"Sorry to wake up. If you were even sleeping. And with the way I know it can feel around here, I would not blame you."

You didn't respond; your lips pressed together, tongue eased up on the top of your mouth as you tried to come back into yourself. Your fingertips gripped across the pillow, rolling your shoulders as you began to ease the ache out of the muscles of your body; you had been in such a deep sleep that you had hardly remembered the past few hours.

"Slept the best I ever have."

"Yeah?"

Your head turned up as you looked over your shoulder, your eyes meeting Bojack's as his stout body began to walk hs way inside; the cuts and the puffiness under his eyes were more protruded than they had ever been now, adding onto the boyish wear and wretched exhaustion across his face as he stumbled his way inward, arms leaned in front of him in an almost comical attempt of balance while he walked his way in.

"I've never felt so grounded in reality as much as I am here, in these bed, this gratitude. I usually have all these subconscious narratives flying in the back of my head all day; of what has happened, of what is to come, of what will be, if anything. And no matter how much it exhausts me, I can't control it. It just keeps coming around, draining me, gripping and swirling me like something out of my control. I don't feel that right now. I feel like-" Your head turned to the pillow; you had intentionally placed the pillow in an overlapping degree from the one you were lying on and over the other, your fingertips pattered as you threaded your hands against it. "-a dumb animal, present, clear minded, though to ascribe something like peace as dumb only goes to show how far gone we are as a species."

Bojack's eyes lowered as he continued to walk his way across the front of the door, giving soft rasps and grunts as he made his way over to the bed. You could tell even just from how he sounded that he was struggling wth the amount of how crossfaded he was; his eyes turned up to you, winced and wretched in their emotion as he began to make his way over to the empty side of the bed that occupied the space beside you. He gave a grunt as he eased his body down, flickeirng his dry eyes and heavily hooded eyelids over to his thumb as he flicked some of the black ash off that was left over from his hand, then eased his hips further back into the sheets, easing his body back further as he looked over at you for a moment, eyes dim and wise with emotional consieration, hand pressed on his stomtahc adorably.

"I've had plenty of days meting people were nothing was mundane and no one had the power to change it, and I always felt the same way about myself. Meeting someone who could grip people out of the mundanity for a little while always felt like a gift that I envied. The least I can do is try to make people like you comfortable. Within reason, obviously."

Though your eyes were settled for looking in front of you, simply taking in the presence of the muddle form of Bojack and his stumbling humbling words, the acceptance you had of your own low lot and finding a lesson in every momen rather than profound shame, knowing to some extent that everyone had to find their own catch of udnerstanind within their life, you began to feel shed some of the complicated soft warmth onto the inquiring words. Everything Bojack spoke seemed to be a question; everything he spoke sounded like soemone who was wise enough that he knew, despite the blunt words that would suggest very little to any fight, ulaitmeley had a soft tender inquiry that followed behind.

You felt your heart quicken as you chest sped up in an excited speculation while your eyes turned up to the humble plush form of Bojack as he sat beside you, back eased against the pillow. Every moment was a constant new resealing of reality and of the encihcing of what there was to take in if there was the want to be able to do so, and you felt especially more inspired and in tune to wake in every message given.

Your eyes flickered open as you looked from the side of your vision, nudging yourself slightly from away the pillow, and, with your hand placed under your cheek and with your attempt of keeping the rushing of thoughts to a minimum, your head turned up as you looked up to his face. His expressions was dim, ears splayed back, eyes puffed and lowered, as someone who came along with someone whos struggled to accept to be apart of existence as it was and for what his role in it was, at least in a way that didn't feel like it was destroying him.

"I'm here."

You saw Bojack's ears flcik up for for a moment at the words; soft and sullen, weak, but with an intention spoken beshind them that caused his eyes to widen as his ears perked up. You turned your head as you saw that same tall, handsome stocky body and brooding snout turning to you at the words, eyes confident, charismatic, searching all at once as he looked you over. He was, after all, handsome in his own way-most especially considering that he was in the age of fifty, and far past his prime; at least by the cliche and conventional ways malicious and unorgional people tried to dress up certain aspects of existence according to their own desperate attempt of making an understanding of it for as long as they could get away with, for the sake of biding their sanity as much as they were able.

The strong curve of his jawline complimented his dark, brooding eyes as he looked down at you, ears flicked forward in way that was indenibaly adorable that only made you soothe further into his inquiry, his black mane landing into a small crown on top of a diamond that sat like a kiss between his two delicate ears. His robe was now gone entirely, showing off his inviting plush and soft form-seeming like the very definition of welcoming comfort of someone who was confident and comfortable enough to not get caught up in the perfectly sculpted toned abe game; though really, it was just because he was helpless, and somehow seeing how helpless he truly was made you feel safer within your own turning of the path you tried to understand in life that had ben wrecked by constant abrasive unforiivng narraiives; black bewilderment of feeling aloe cerintly being one of them that came along with the utterly simple nature of existence that didn't bode well with the human mind.

It must have come from that innate wisdom he carried. More than any of that was he inviting, and more than that was he desperate, and more than that did you feel the way that he had a radiation that seemed to all too quickly turned that desperation into love-or something that it wished that it knew how to be.

There was something in his combination between years of experience but also lack of love that seemed to be crashing against one another like waves; the opposite of his with his years of his preovileeg and his decades of forgetting the natural wisdom that came along with with being humbled and taking in the ways of life and of existence that forced someone to dig fully into themselvs, realzing that was there being all there was; and you being on the abrupt end of that. There was something inside of him that was completely and utterly rocked from years upon years of longing- but you knew that you loved, at least as much as you had the idea of love, to him not for his brokenness, but rather because of who he was despite it; and you loved him for the brokeess, if only because it was an agreement to the wrecked aimless devastation that partly wa sonly as heavy as it was because of the fact that it was experienced entirely alone; and the meaninglessness of life only dressed up as profound through themselves or another if only from the people happening to be in certain places of their life where they found the helpless wnaderings of another something to be remarkable.

Though you were attracted to him for whatever it was that had molded him into who he was, and everything in between. Now it was just a matter of expressing it; and doing the one thing complex enough that it made people occuiped for the rest of their lives; trying to discover and understanding the endless understanding of what made up the inward life of someone else and themselves, constant and ever changing.

"Good." His lip raised up, meeting the slight heavy contempt in his eyes as he raised his lip into a small, but content, smile. "You are here. Good."

His hands were left complacent on his stomach, his other arm slung beside the plush love handles of his body as it sat sullenly by his side. But his eyes ketp darting over to you, and he grumbled as he eased his hand on the sheet and pulled it forward and over his wasit, kicking some of the flasks with the medal clanging against one another as he turned his eyes with an annoyed flash, then settled for easing the sheet inot a crumpled mesh of an attempt around his body as it rested beside the curve of his plump body.

"All the times I've had to be able ot reflect on how fleeting time was and how little there was to be done about it except to just accept the passage fleeting of time-and how little time I had to enjoy it or the few people that could stand me enough to call being apart of my life, and it hasn't made it any better. If anything it's just made the time go by-faster. Less controlled." His eyes were lwoered to the side of your body again, eyelids eased down into that hevay and detached fashion as ears lowered. "I'm sorry. You don't need to know that. It's just-it feels good, worthwhile, to say it around you."

"What does?"

"Everything. Anything that could possibly go through my head for the time that I'm perceiving life and every passing moment, no matter how mundane or repstive it is, it seems to pass by a little quicker every time." His eyes kept down. "Sorry. I'm sure this all sounds unnecessary and dumb."

"No. I like to hear it."

His eyes didn't turn up to yours right away, but something changed in his eyes, and after a moment did he turned his expression up as his eyes turned to yours, and in the narratives of his eyes did you feel for a moment less alone in a world that had required the exhausting oreseal of constantly having to carry your own narrative.

"Well-" He took a breath as he rolled his chubby shoulders back, slammed his body up against the side of the back of the bed in front of you, face melting into exhaustion and letting out a tired quick breath as his face buried itself into the pillow while his heard turned to look you over. He let out something that was in between a neigh and a sigh of exhaustion as he messily tangled his fingers in front of him through the sheets, his eyes darted down in insecurity as he tried to make sense of the clear disgruneltment he had with talking or of how to take the small anrratie turning over his mind and making it something worthwhile and stretched beyond what it was. "It's alright, anyway. I'm sure we both realized this a long time ago. Over and ou, right?"

You allowed your body to turn slightly as you raised up the sheets to your breasts, fingertips eased against the sheets as they folded across your skin, if only for the sake of trying to keep him calm within whatever inflcition might have haunted him otherwise. Your eyes were gently folding over his body while trying to make it as unassuming as possible. His eyes darted up to you, as in instinct and beyond his control, teeth poking out from his lip as he did so as he met the invite and the unspoken narrative in your eyes, and, as it was with all the small messy minute natures that made up the niche existence of individuality and love and human life that the loud repressive nature of the world tried to ignore in soulless cliches if only for the intimidation it had towards the unknown and what couldn't be easily comprehended, if ever, was met in full in that moment in the soft niche ways of made up one another.

Bojack's eyes protuded as he looked you over, and though it was small and helpless and felt like barely enough in the contrast of being human, there was something in his eyes that felt like a narrative that was specific, guidining, gentle as he lookd you over; and anything it gave was ceritnly more than nothing.

"I wasn't sleeping anyway."

Your skin felt on fire from the way his fingers caressed your hip-it simply happened, as everything between the both of you was.

He seemed only half aware as he continued to caress your bones-they were prrotruding from your hips, as they always were, and though you felt the nature desire to repeal his touch, to destroy, the way you always did with trauma and the men who had pleasured themselves within you for the sake of their own pleasure, you knew that there was nothing beyond the brokenness of a life except for emptiness.

You felt your body leaning into it naturally. Your shoulders yourself further towards him-his own brawny, broad shoulders weren't resisting from the intimacy you were giving him. Something about these two dark eyes were glistening with those colors again -screaming with a certain bursting life or living space that made it impossible to close your eyes.

"Good intimacy will make even the starkest and dullest lighting seem worthwhile. You're the first woman that I've ever had in this bed to make me realize how true that is. "

Bojack's breath, smelling of smoke anf gin and of other fmaialir gestures of his detachment towards exsitecen and the natural strain it had on a life,, eased against your face; it was as human, comforting, as much as anything had ever been about him. You let out a small laugh, nervous but inviting.

"People are funny. We are born, we live and we perceive the existence, thoughts, interests and beleds of others, and we do this over and over again until when we're left with ourselves as we get older we just see ourselves and it all as the empty, ever passing waste of an existence inherreitnly indifferent to out empty small lives; we could envr fathom it, and we shoudn't, and we come to cosndir something like mundane truth profound."

Bojack's ears flickered at that. He gazed at you as his eyes lowered into something that seemed between apology along with the still present disassociated chaos that was going inside of his eyes, and, idenbaily, something that seems like it was broken. It came from a longing that was so heated that it seemed as if it made you hurt just to see the inherent work inside of it. He was, after all, working on himself, no matter how much he or anyone else denied the fact-and more than anything in that moment was it clear how simple it all was, which, as it was with human nature, was the reason why it never would be.

"Am I pathetic?"

There was a soft bit of a gentle desperation in his voice- a strange combination compared to the masculine gravel witty nature that was inside of his tone more often than not. Your eyebrows furrowed as you took in those colored desperate pools of his utterly inhuman inquiry. He cleared his throat, leaning himself further to you. The movement alone was enough to make you feel a strike of satisfied, if a bit sickening, excitement in your chest. You paused, and then you stated;

"Do you think I'm pathetic?"

"Oh, c'mon. You can't turn my own question on me."

There was a pause in the air-you shifted slightly, unable to find a response. You could feel his tender sensitivity on the other side of the question as he continued with a somber expression and an even more somber tone;

"When you look at me, what do you see? Honestly."

"Why do you respect what I think? I'm nothing, nothing that I think, or do, or try means anything. It won't affect anything about you either way."

"I don't think so. You feel like the first person who has something that feels like they would actually know what they're talking about-instead of the stupid little reviews and the drunks at the partities and the events of movies and-" He paused as he rolled his shoulders as he gazed back at you with that impossible eternal look of his eyes. "I feel like I have an experience with you every time I'm with it, and I want to know what that's like."

You out of the soft breath, taking in the way that he felt. His warm hand eased against your hip again, the feeling plush and tender-confident but broken in how it caressed and ghosted your body that was bruised and battered with yellow bruises and cuts more than anything that would be comfortable to either perceive or to interact with; but Bojack had a surprisingly delicate touch to the way his palm grazed against your skin, as someone who was taught in the ways of which he was taught to be ashamed or assume something would come out of handling you too roughly-or that anything good could ever come out of it.

He seemed like a warm combination of free naivety and authentic desire, but also of a stable confidence of uncaring about what most did due to his protection of a tender hear that tormented itself when wrecking itself too deeply into the bad; and Bojack had, if nothing else,a good heart, the kind that would torment himself to the end if not deemed good or well; and that in and of itself was a profound tenderness deprived of most. You felt like you were being redisocvered and brought into something that was not unlike reading an old piece of art, oversatured and dry and tired; and yet the only consistent thing that had ever felt like human-that had ever made you human.

It wasn't anything that was particularly remarkable that you thought of to answer him, and it certainly seems as if it was a very extension of the chaotic lifestyle that he gave into so naturally would eat up any help you could give him-and you were aware of the relentless energy and the idneintable end that came along with trying to love someone.

Despite the natural pollution of the Los Angeles hot sun that seemed permanently embedded into his slightly sunburnt skin, there was something in his air that smelled of a fresh air longing of some simple cottage spring, of clear lake water and the simplicity of cottage wood. There was something in him that was inherently separate from the pollution of the fame obsessed and equally heavy fog of moral and clear headedness combined in the city-it was inherent in who he was, that purity, and being tormented and lost only deepened the wisdom and the depth that came along with genuine experience, whether feeling good or not.

He was different from the buildings of the city that had made more bones and graveyards of lightning spirits and bright eyed souls than it ever had buildings to be lived or worked in-and yet people had become them. The people were the buildings-the buildings had become the people. But not Bojack. He had, somehow, clung onto his humanity. Wrecked and disgrutneld bewildered; but deep and messy and profound humanity nonetheless. Perhaps that was the reason why he was so conflicted and would never be happy-he would always be aware of that which so many had torn away. The lack of human connection of a malnourished community certainly hadn't been able to save him. Rather than giving him one simple answer, one that had no solution, and one that would never be able to find the end of it, you knew that to speak fact was the only thing that could be done.

"You're the last thing." The words left your lips as natural as anything. "If anything, I think you're one of the very few people that is actually willing to be pathetic so that they can prove to themselves that they're not-because you're honest, and real, and there's nothing less pathetic than that, and it allows the other lived experiences people to see you. And I think that is enough, for anyone; for yourself, no matter what."

Bojack's ice liquor eyes switched between yours for a moment, and then he let out a large, gastly chuckle as he squinted at you. "What in the hell does that mean?"

You adjusted yourself in the sheets. "Can you get closer?"

It was something that you have been wanting to state since the moment he had invited you into his apartment. Bojack's eyes searched your expression, lips pouted, eyes turning over you uncerintly, but his hands moved up to your breasts, then down to your torso-then back up towards your hest, his hands unraveling the sheets that were crumpled between your chest as his fingertips uneaved by the sheets; not inteitonally, but the lovability of his uncertain hand was naturally unraveling the slim of the grey sheets around your body as then began to ease down your brests, and you found you didn't mind.

"You're wonderful." Your eyes turned against his, hand reaching out as your palm guided across his cheek while you looked him over, your palm easing across his cheek until the spaces between your expression and the overlapping of the pillows eased against one another; there was a delicate light of life in your eyes that only came from a niche true and profound life, and Bojack felt his eyes bugged and himself drawn into t as he looked you over. "That's all you need to know."

Bojack's eyes closed instantly, the the wear of his face treamored as he titled his snout down, then managed a breath as his eyes turned back up to you, delicate inquiry of depth as he looked you over; something rich nd profound with the delicate way of how you memorized one another and, as it was with anything true or meaningful, something that could so easily be torn and lost.

"Do you want me to sleep on the couch tonight?" His head turned down as his eyes winced in something that suggested his own want to avoidance, ears lowered as he turned down. "Because -uh-"

"Please stay here with me." Bojack's eyes turned backt o you, and in the fear you had of anything even remotely suggesting towards the future and what it held, of the edge of the brink of losing all false sense of control in th meantime, and in the wake of the precious allure you had to Bojack and the awakening that you had that you had always deserved to feel as seen and comforted as much as you did now, and anything else an injustice over the fog of your negative thoughts self blame and pain, were you aware of just how decliae life was; and as he had said himself, there was an acknowledgement of it in how it made the moments, smaller, rather than larger. "I mean it." Your hands reached out from where they had been entangled in the sheets a moment before, reaching out as your fingertips threaded against his hand.

His hands played with his fingers, dancing between the spaces of yours; nervous, uncertain, guided while across your hand as his teeth poked.

"Are you asking because you really want me to? I promise I won't mind. If being in a bed with a man with a-not gret repaution makes you feel bad at all-"

"I want you to. That's why I'm inviting you."

His eyes rolled up. "Well, obviously I mean that, but-"

"This feels so good. I feel liek I could stay here forever-and with the world having always told me I wa snever enough no matter what i did or who I was and just exhausting me beyond anything I could change, I don't care about what I'm expected or supposed to do to make myself worthwhile to a race that has proven time and time and over again about hwo flawed it is to destory itself. None of it is relevant to me, and I'm destroyed and tired, and I am ready to do whater it is that feels good to me-no matter what it looks like to anyone else. I'll neever force myself to do or be anything ever again that dosen't feel like me, and I want to stay in anything that feels true and good to me forever while this world ruins itself." Your fingertips squeezed further across Bojack's fingers, and his eyes winced as he turned his expression ip and looked ou ove,r bottom eyes winced delcialtely. "And you are apart of that."

You gradually shouldered yourself away from the few inches away that separated you, sheets falling off your body as you made your way closer; enough so that he could press his own body that was particularly large with its size and stature against yours. His body was naturally graceful, especially the mane that was eased up his height of neck and the grace of the heavy wonder of his eyes; evident even more than it was now-but more than that was he lovable. Even outside of his weight, the entirely of his body seemed several inches height and in width separate from yours; large, warm, forthcoming, and his skin gently at ease with the film of the sweat that came along from the musty genltness of being under the sheets. You found that even more enticing-it wasn't just those eyes that were fabricated with an air of yet discovered mystery.

Bojack hesitated for a moment, conflict dancing in his eyes. That inherent sense of looking inside of you deeply, mixed in with the sense that he only wanted to be able to find somebody to sleep with at all, seemed at war with itself.

"Honey-" he took a deep breath. "Shit. Sorry. I shouldn't have called you that. I just don't want to ruin this. Whatever it is. It'll turn into meaningless sex and you'll be done with me and I'll spiral into hatred that I ruined it. I'll-"

He took a deep breath, and you could tell he was losing grip on whatever previous confidence had carried him before. You knew now you loved him-the truth of it seemed demanding now, a sensation that forced to be paid attention to, physically pounding against your chest; as all worthwhile emotions did. But whether or not he was only playing with you just for the sake of having anyone to love at all, you weren't sure. As if to answer your inner questions inside of your own troubled and muddy water of mind-

"God, I think I like you."

Your body froze a bit at the statement. For a moment did you accept the numb that washed over you at the the inuttuion of the life that was behind it. Wet stained your eyes, and you felt a mix of self loathing and relief as it stained towards the front of your cheeks.

"Shit-I'm going too far." He reached out a hand and pressed it against your cheek, eyes strumming with worry. "You can ignore that if you want. What you deserve right now is rest."

His fingers complimenting your cheek, mixed in with his confession, was more than you could stand.

Gradually did you come back to your senses as you turned your head closer towards the heat of his breath that left his lips-tasting of coffee, old breakfast, whiskey and other stagane forms of life and the complacy of trying to make an agreement with it despite all odds at once. You wanted to touch his shoulders, untouched by the sheets that ended halfway up his shoulders.

"You don't have to love me." You managed in the chokehold of your throat after a moment. "It's ok just to be curious about each other."

Bojack shook his head, his mane flying itself on the side of the pillow.

"No. I love you. Or-and I know this seems like some soulless statement made by someone happier in their life because they can't see people for how stupid they are and themselves and are happier in their lives for it, but-I've never felt such an-opening with someone before. Something where it felt like an entire new way of life, of being, of believing and living was opening in front of me. Something that's more than just the attempt of positive thinking, which always felt a bit fake, no matter how much I didn't want it to be. This feels real. As tangible as any negativity I've ever felt."

"I've always said about negvative scenarios that even if you've lost everything or are being treated terribly, it's ultimately how you respond to it that makes it negative; you still make that choice."

"Of course." Bojack's eyebrows furrowed, and a small raise of his lip as his eyebrows lowered as he looked at you teasingly. "How else would you have managed to survive as long as you have?"

"Thank you for being earnest." Your fingers squeezed against his, and Bojack's teeth poked out vaguely as he gave a small nod; and in the wake of the simplicity of the meaning and the reassurance and strength you had from one another was there something of a freedom away from the sin of the world that had previously been so absent that you both had forgotten it existed. "I can't imagine how much that skill must be begged to be taken away from you with the environment you're in."

He paused as he thought of the words. He winced as his ears lowered, wet eyes turning across your hands; his voice was somber and mature, his eyes erratic and conflicted, and you had never felt anything furhrter drawn into.

"I'm sorry if I'm acting crazy. But when I see and get around enough, which I have more than most, it's hard to ignore the feeling. I've felt it before. But it always went somewhere, and the feeling was so fleeting compared to the emptiness that by the feeling was gone, the person who had inspired the feeling made it feel like the sensation was more of a punishment than something to be celebrated, "

His eyes were squinting with the effects of the stimnaltns he had taken for the night as he looked over at you, mixed in with that pained desperation that made you feel if your heart was flipping inside of itself. "But I mean it. Whatever this is, it feels incredible. Every time you're over-every time that you give me advice, hangout, whatever. There's just something about you. You take-"

"Bojack, please."

The words were symbolic of something that was pleading but also patient-both with your own discomfort at whether he meant the words or if he were merely speaking them. He was crossfaded and, frankly- not himself, and thought you felt it, you knew you were broken, and your perception of things and of what you wanted them ot be verses what they truly were was broken in kind. "Not like this."

Panic flew across Bojack's eyes.

"Do you not-have I been misinterpreting this whole thing? I'm sorry-" He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry,I'm making this weird, aren't I?"

"Not at all." You allowed your hand to hesitantly caressed his skin, feeling the heat leak from his body as it made its way to his shoulders, which were slightly cooler from not being under the intimate feeling of the skin and sweat and emotional intimacy under the sheets. "It's exactly what I want to hear. This long journey of life, that plays by no rules, especially for the ones we wish that it did. But that's the reason why I don't want you to say it yet."

"I-I'm sorry. You're making about as much sense as a third remake of a movie no one wanted. What are you saying?"

He was so incredibly desperate to be comforted-and it killed you more than you could explain how much you wanted to give him it. Still, there was a complication of knowing that he was too damaged to be able to know what love was yet; but your attempt of stopping him came from your own knowing that you knew were just as much. You wanted to speak that to him as much as you could-as much as you were able to.

Boajck took your silence as a reason to fight further. "I don't tolerate anyone, you know. Well-barely. I told Todd to get out about fifty different times when he first showed up. The woman I didn't date for more than about two weeks before I started to feel this, uh-emptiness. Most people I can't even stand. I'm finding it hard to believe I'll ever find anyone who ever will. I'm not much of a fan of the state of the average person. Never have been. People annoy the hell out of me. If I find even one person I can see any kind of half full glass in, I try more than anything to see something good in that-to save myself."

"But not anymore?"

"Not anymore." His eyes turned up to you, glistening with meaning behind the light of the cities. "There's an odd timeline that seems unspoken with how long people pursue or believe in a certain person, way of life, pursuit-any of it. Once you feel that..knowing that it's not for you anymore, there's no going back. I feel it with every person, or-they do with me. Even though I would have tired to do or be anything to be enough. I've tried to almost invent myself into one, the belief, even if it felt forced, but I always knew it was, because that feeling isn't exactly one that they sell at your local convenience store. And it hurts that I've spent most of the middle aged years with only one ex-girlfriend. I didn't love to fill that void because I could never settle with people I didn't like." He paused, eyes wined in a troubled, mature nature."Mostly. And journey that comes with being alone-I've felt like I've had no choice. But I can't take it. "

He adjusted, his body pressing closer to yours, ears lowered, eyes dimmed as he looked you over.

"It's a great thing we're all so flawed, right?" He chuckled raspily as he squeezed your hand. "What else would we do to learn and find meaning? I think we all enjoy and take pride in the games we play with orusleves and how messed up and in pain everyone is. Pain is the only thing that makes life something human and not robotic; pain is the wonder of what makes people are reltiaonships what they are, where art comes from, the only thing that genuinely connects anyone to one another in something other than the stagance of happiness. Maybe it's the only way I ever could have been. Maybe it's what I want."

The heat of him was becoming unbearably inviting, utterly endearing. The words he was speaking that made it clear he truly did dislike most human nature was only making his intimacy towards you that much more remarkable. There was an almost crushing sense to your infatuation and the rhythm between you, knowing that it came from years of being so unsatisfied by such little fulfillment or worthwhile company. You wished it could have come from a place of less pain-wish you could have healed it for him, and to take out that insecure gleam in his eyes that showed off someone who was always on the brink of waiting for the next horrible thing to be spoken, either from himself or others.

Your eyes flicked down in thought, letting the somber tone of Bojack and his soft consideration ease through the air. Your fingertips eased across the sheets, eyes furrowed in thought for a moment, the both of you enjoying the simple air of being around someone who naturally brought along genuine meaning and stimulation of happiness.

"What were you doing, the day that you drove over to the liquor store before you took me in?"

Bojack's eyes dimmed as he looked you over. There was a glimmer of insecurity in his eyes, and something hidden-or an attempt to be.

"What do you mean?"

"What were you doing? Where were you going?"

"Oh. Well-to get liquor, obviously." He shrugged as his eyes turned down.

"No. I mean after that."

"After?' The bottom of his eyes winced in that insecure fashion. His ears lowered, and be gave a breath of something heavy; a clear emotional reset and preperation for someone who was timid. 'Just, uh-to drink it to let the day go by a little easier."

"Were you?"

Bojack winced, his eyes turned against yours as he looked you over, vague flair in his eyes while he tried to understand your challenge.

"Why are you asking this?"

"I want to know who you are." Your fingers leaned forward, and Bojack's ears lowered as he gave another deep breath, your fingertips rasing forward as your fingertips gripped across his palms. Bojack's eyes turned down as he winced and looked at your hand. "If I'm going to get caught up in someone and find the amount of experiences and lessons as much as I have you already, I'd like to have things a little clearer, a little bit more of depth, so that I can take them in full, if you'll let me. When we're done with one another, and the emptiness of the void of existence opens up again and waits for another thing to fill it as my life goes on, I'd like to be able to think that the way I remembered of how I loved you even on my worst day will stay with me. Give me a sense of identity, a depth, even if only a memory and a reflection of how things could be to come."

"Is clearer a thing?" He winced in insecurity, ears lowered, as his hand gripped eside yours. There was an energy he was giving you with every interaction were previously there was only emptiness; and you wanted the energy to fill the void of the emptienss as long as you were able. "Or are you just asking for things to be messier?"

"Maybe you're right." Your cheek readjusted by the pillow as your fingertips eased against his again. "But-please."

Bojack's eyes flicked down, ears lowered back further, and you could catch the flicker of shame that came across his expression as his eyes turned down for a moment.

"I was-driving. Driving over to a bridge that, ah-a guy I used to admire usually drove to. Wanted to go there for the day, take it in. See what it was like."

"Is that all?"

The muscles on Bojack's face treamored; an undeniable sense of his shame and conflict as the wet of his eyes eased across the emotion of his uncertain eyes.

"No, no. That's not all. I was-" He paused, kept his fingertips eased against your hand, and then wicked as something in his resistance broke. "I was going to jump. With the-intention of hurting myself. Or worse. Whatever it was that happened. Drunk, stumbling, foggy brained-I didn't care. Even if I had woken up paralyzed, I would have taken it. As long as there wasn't this heaviness of expectancy to-be me anymore. To have my own physical and emotional agency every day."

"And seeing me-that was the reason why you didn't?"

Bojack's eyes turned up and he met the reflective wonder of yours again-he was surprised at the lack of the weight of the judgement he had so readily expected from you, the slashing of any araisve hatred you might have given him in the wake of his expectancy for the usual reaction to the ill will of a soul that he had seen in other woman countless times.

"In..a sense." He paused as he tasted the somber reflection of the word, ears lowered as his eyes tuned doen, heavy and tired, full of emotion. "Something I've realized through the emptiness of a life is that there's something about it that just inherently takes care of you. No matter how little you think it will, or how terrirble it feels with every hour, there's some inhreint endurance of existicing in any scenario that keeps you going anyway, even if you have nothing to ground you or kept you there, something about the way existence is and the mind forgives itself, at least a little bit." His eyes turned up as he met yours, and you gave a small nod for him to continue. "On that day I was thinking about how that unseen…chemistry, I guess you could call it, was carrying me, despite the lack of any reason for me to be grounded or at home with anything or to feel good about anything. And, just as I was about to shrug it off and put this inhrient exhsuting trust into something unseen and was going to get in the car and start driving off anyway-I felt it again, but ths time more powerful, and then I saw you. Usually it's hard for me to believe in anything that the majority isn't doing, with the way that it is with them-but on that day, seeing you, it was more than anything. It was like this disassciaoted, indescribable belief overcame me for a moment, and for once it was something coerent. Something I wanted to follow-needed, even."

Your eyes turned down, and Bojack's teeth poked as he felt himself watching your reaction; eyes trailing across your expression while ears lowered, vulnerable and tender, lost and wondering. His heart thudded, his viens rushed with questions, and yet all he wanted was to watch you for answers that he felt in something as simple as the rytham of connection between the both of you.

"I've heard you were never married."

A slight offense came over Bojack's expression as his head titled back, eyes turning as he looked you over.

"Why does that matter?"

"A little strange for someone of your stature, millions, chamring, intelligent-kind."

"Oh." The offense of Bojack's features turned to an understanding, and he winced as he turned his eyes down, ears lowered as he thought it over. "People aren't worth it, I guess. They bring their baggage and all their shit and expect you to tolerate it while they tolerate yours. And no one talks about anything that matters. People are just flesh vacuums speaking about the same thing over and over. Clones. I've met the same person ninety times in a different body. And-admittely, maybe it was me, a lot, too. This idea that I didn't know after a certain point how to love someone deeply and profoundly, much less be with them at all without this incessant damage over time of hitting each other or hurting each other without meaning to until there was this black damage over time. I've seen it happen, I've felt it happen a little bit with the few people I've managed to keep with me long enough to get the simulate of the idea-I hate all of it. Wors than that, I'm terrified of it."

You paused as you looked him over, and though he felt seen, and the inherent depth of the weight of that, it didn't feel like a punishment as much as it did like something that was being pulled back, revealed, rather than dwelled into a foggy complacency of being hidden and of never having anywhere to be seen.

"I don't know how appropriate of a question this is to ask."

"Go ahead."

"Where does that leave the both of us, then?"

He knew the question has been coming, he paused as his eyes lowered while his fingertips tapped beside your skin, nervous, fltitering across the spaces of your hand as he allowed it as a map for his uncertainty.

"I'm not sure you would like the way that would change how the world responds to you. I know you might not see it this way, but there's something to be had about indifference. If the world becomes..aware of you, you're going to be under their pressure, and believe me when I say isolation isn't as bad as much as what other people are capable of.

"Bojack-it's not about other people."

He paused, and his eyes turned up as he searched your expression, his eyes looking at you in inquiry.

"I don't want you to rush into this." You spoke the words almost as if they were as natural as breathing, as if he specifically had been made than just to be able to hear them, and you to speak them to him; your energy, presence, was currently all in rhythm perfectly. Bojack's eyes flickered into yours, and with the way it was with all profound and not entirely understood things, there was the insistence for you to keep going.

"You're so tender. Broken- so soft, so sweet. So you. And I wouldn't trade one different part of what makes you for anything else."

Bojack laughed, softly, eyes bittersweet as he ease his expression down, slight relief flooding in his eyes, only for a hint.

"That is the kindest dressing up of those qualities I have ever heard."

"But I also want you to know exactly what we are, what you feel, what you say and where its coming from, and I don't want you to have to rush into it."

"I'm not rushing into it." Bojack's eyes flew up, new edge of insistence in his eyes. "I'm trying to tell you how I feel before this all goes to shit the way that it always does. I have to make the most of it while I can, right?"

"Make the most of what?"

"I don't know. This. Everything. You understand?"

He was slurring, giving away just how completely far gone he was because of the alcohol and cigarettes he had taken that night. Your eyes blinked rapidly as you felt his hot breath as it left the front of his lips.

You wanted to kiss him. His body was plush and innovating with an irreplaceable soft tenderness that made you feel almost sick with the temptation to know it. You wanted to feel him more than anything. More than the intimacy of the kiss did you want to give him exactly what he wanted- instant gratification, with little reflection on why he was feeling what he did, or where it was going; to have the soothing meditation of simply feeling. To allow him to fall into a new narrative that was deprived from the one he had fallen into so many times that he was far too broken for anyone to be able to instantly give it to him without breaking his very real and authentic tender nature that, although genuinely felt and expressed, came from a place of a shattered desire to be wanted. By anyone. And therefore, desperate and grabbing for whatever relief he could get away from the constant black narratives of a life and a world that seemed inescapable.

Whatever was between the both of you now, it was far more than just romance-but rather two desperate souls who just happened to find themselves in the same place, unable to withstand against each other's issues to do whatever it was that was broken inside of him. He was flowers burst from a broken shattered ripped strain of years of spilling himself into a culture he didn't belong to and never would-he never had. He would cling onto anything that remind him of those soft spring days as a boy, where he had been born into the same circumstances with the same end, but by the cabin and the field that his parents brought him by to see family, there was nothing but the irreplace sense of innocence that came alone with the soothing nature of those days.

"I don't want you thinking you love me just because you're lonely. I know how I feel about you."

"How can you possibly know that?" There was a strain to Bojack's voice as he spoke, eyes wining as he looked you over. "It's only been two days."

"I know. But-"

"I can't do this quick infactuation thing again. I can't hande it. I won't. You're not the first wman t come around in my life where you think you like what you see just because its easy or because its something that you think is there when it's not."

"That's not-"

"I have done this too many times. And I'm sorry. And I feel something too, and it feels so-wonderful. But I can't keep going right now, with you talking on a literal level with every woman I've ever been with. Who create this idea in their heads that I'm going to be the new perfect thing that saved me. I don't have it in me-and if this is just another desperate griphold that we both have on our despair of our lives and the emptiness of it and nothing else, the, I think I'll have to say no. I can't do that again. And especially not-with the way that this feels." His ears lowered, teeth poked as he looked you over, eyes wincing. "I'm sorry."

"You don't have to. I know."

"You don't, though. That's the thing. You think you do, the same way everyone else does. But I'm telling you that once you start to experience it-you won't know what you were truly signing up for until it's too late. The same way that always happens. When you're at a point where there's no changing anything and you've learned too much and can't go back to who you were before you had thos experiences and emotions. I am telling you, you can'tt ake it back. No one evr can. I've spent my entire life doing that-and with the way things look with me, I bet you wouldn't be too hard pressed to figure out what the end result of that was."

"I don't."

"Yes, you do. And you know you do."

"But I want to be able to experience whatever rare thing it is that the both of us are feeling. That I know we boht do."

"Please." Bojack turned his head to the side as he looked away, yes dim and ears lowered, but your hand kept gripped by him to turn his attention back to you, and he did so without hestiance, his eyes turning you over as he gave you his full attention; it was one of those things that felt as if it couldn't be helped; and he didn't want it to be."

"Don't rob this from us just because we don't understand it. I know that we don't know what the pain will feel like long term or how it will hit us."

"Exactly. And we've both been through enough. So why are we doing this?"

"You know that if we don't, we'll be more punished than if we did."

"Shit." Bojack's eyes winced in that gentle conflciton as his eyes turned down, ears splayed. You explained with a tremor in your voice of barely suppressed emotion; and whether Bojack wanted to or not, and no matter how hard it was to agree with after a lifetime of having no profound meaning and the even larger ordeal of convince himself there was none, the opening of something otherwise was opening up with just as much of a vivid reality; but he needed to adjust to it, and whether or not he could fight for his sense for humanity seemed beyond him.

"And I think you know how you feel it, too. The most tragic thing about happiness is that it's so imposisbly easy that it's almost laughable at how much people suffer to be able to have it with them-all we need is the simple idea of taking care of one another. Of having someone to do it with. That's all, really."

"I know that." Bojack's voice was rasped, edged as he turned his eyes away, expression grimacning. "I've always known that."

"It doesn't mean we have to jump into it right now. We can just be here. We don't have to label anything, we don't have to try anything."

Your eyes were desperate, and searching his in the almost abrasive hope that somehow he could give the broken damn to you immediately.

"Nothing has ever worked out for me before. And the best way I've been able to protect myself was giving myself this narrative that I could survive, be ok with that-that I could-agree with it somehow. A life without quality or love. And now that I've done all the work-it would be almost cruel to ask me to do that now. To unbreak everything I worked for."

"And the rest of your life?" Your voice broke, eyes pitched with insistence and there was a greatness there begging to be invented-but he knew it would die on it's own, and he could see in the desperate red of your eyes that you felt and knew the same on the same plane of existence. "What then?

"I don't-"

His hand grip on the side of your hips, consistent with an urgency that almost would have come across as aggressive- if it wasn't for the fact that you knew just how innocent his motivations were underneath that rocked desperation. No one had ever cut him a break-not on the emotional plane of endless complexity that made up someone as damaged as much as it let someone within the unforgiivng bleak and black of life, and to give him the love deprived from him since birth; an impossible black curve of vision with no perspective around it. No one had allowed his damage to thrash where it needed to until it settled into its much needed nest so that gentle side of a lover could thrive.

"Please don't make me have to look too far ahead."

"Why?"

"Because-" He paused as he pressed his lips together, eyes winced in thought, and even with all the flaws, the both of you felt yourselves coming to life in the wake of one another's presence simply for what it was in and of itself. "Because if it's the right thing, it'll be too good for me to be able to meet it, or that the good will be so incredible that it will destroy me in some way. And if it's bad-with the way things have felt, I won't be able to handle knowing it was another delusion of something that has never been or ever will.

You allowed your own hand to press against his that was resting by your hips, threading out of where it was resting against the spaces of his, squeezing your fingers against it.

"I know I'm lonely. That is all I've ever been-and it affects everything. That seems to be anything I've ever been. It's probably all I'll ever be. So can we just enjoy this for what it is?"

"You don't have to sett-"

"Before it's gone forever? I can't expect anything good to stick around, so this is the next best thing, right?"

"That's where you're wrong. I'm not going anywhere, because I'm not trying to use you."

"How else can anyone be there for anyone?"

"I want to share in experiences with you. The same I would myself. The same that I inevitably do with myself and have profound experience sin myself, ether good or bad that comes along with being alive, and the same I feel that I inevitably share with you now, even before I knew you, as if we were experiencing one another through each other just by being as we were, loving one another just by being as we were."

You kept your hand squeezed up against the side of his. You could feel the way that his hands squeezed firmly in response to yours; and the vulnerability in his eyes was a new sense of precious purity, and a soul of what made up something eccentric, soft, known between two people that could find the niche magic of their own individuality away from the world-the only way to be.

"Things change. Things leave. People leave. I can't even keep a photograph of my mother. Not that I wanted to keep it around. But the fact that it's gone just goes to show that I need to make the most of it. Of any sign of anyone who ever-even concerned themselves with me."

"You've had so many girlfriends."

"No. I didn't. They were here for an experience. We-were here for an experience, and it was cheap. This feels like a small inner eye of a gift from something above anything, but I don't know how to reac to it. Whatever way we loved one another before inside of ourselves the way you're describing, maybe it was just meant to stay in an inner voice of our own inner eyes. I have to jump and take things for what they are while I can."

He pressed his hands against the side of your hip, insistent. It almost seemed as if it was somewhat forceful, but you weren't afraid. There was something about his almost boyish desperation that felt as if you had been made to handle it, and you kept your hands firmly pressed up against the side of his in reminder that you wouldn't float off into some indescribable expanse of a void the way he seemed to believe. He was gone within that indescribable sensation-and alcohol and the damage that he tried to hide was at the forefront of his mind.

"Who you are right now- it's under the influence." You spoke it gently. "And I don't doubt that you mean what you say, in your own way. But I want you to be gentle with yourself when you think about loving me. I want it to be genuine. I want it to feel real. For me and for you. I want you to take your time with it. Not have it be something that comes from pain. And more than that, I want you to believe in it-the impossible richness that comes along with loving someone else."

His eyes widened, flared with uncertainty-adorable, vulnerable, compelling and human.

"I don't know how to do that."

You allowed your hand to lead to his until it was buried under the sheets, his hand still ghosting across your hip, but this time his grasp was led down your thigh and under the sheets, and you nudged your shoulders further until you were only a few short minure inches away from him.

"It's alright. I don't either. That's the beauty of it. That's the beauty of being alive."

There was a certain kind of thickness to the way that his skin felt, especially mixed in with the heat of the sheets and the intimate lovable sensation of your bodies pressed against each other that only came from a sense of resounding comfortability with one another. There was a certain kind of threaded guidning you were helping yourselves both towards. He needed it as much as you did.. His eyes looked up at you with that desperation-but there was a calmed peace as he took in your words. He opened his mouth, teeth poked, and the widening buldge of his eyes that had that pathetic vulenrbailtiy began to widen further into something precious and wonderuflly deserving of being cradled; he leaned forward as he began to press his lips against your own after a pathetic uncertainw whimper, made even more attractive and alluring through his humble pathetic self doubt and hs flaws that somehow made him more worthy of love, rather than less, and you nodded, feeling relief as he allowed himself to press his lips against yours. Although you couldn't find the strength inside you to fight it, you didn't kiss him back, either.

"Not today, Bojack," you murmured against his lips as they teased against yours.

"What?" His voice hitched, heartbreakingly insecure, as he pulled away. "I thought you wanted-" His voice broke in its raspy tone, and he cleared his throat. He tried again, but his poked teeth and bewildered eyes as he tired to going grounding in your messages searched in the timeless look of his eyes that was beyond understanding, especially for the superficiality majority and especially for you, even just being witness to living in people, in contrast to the profound remarkability in Bojack's eyes.

You nudged your nose against his snout, pushing him away slightly.

"Why not?"

"Because you deserve more than just a one-night fling that you won't be able to remember if I give you exactly what you want right now."

"But I though you wanted me to believe in this."

His voice was edged, a little bit offended, but mostly desperate, bewildered, adorable, endearing.

"I do. But I also need to figure out how to help you with that. I'm irreprabaly flawed, too-and I want to love you more than anything. We both need to figure out what that means. But I am exhausted."

"So what do you want me to do?"

You ddin't answer; amditelly, you didn't know yourself, and Bojack could read that. Something in his fae treamored, and he grunted softly as he leaned forward again, pressed his lips with a slight hesitancy against yours. There was a tender uncertainty to the touch. You felt the soft tinge of white hair that grew from his snout caressing yours. The energy of the sentiment behind it was what made it so memorable-the genlness, the boyish uncertainty, the touch of an air of a pure heart put in wretched cirucstances, lovable and sweet, and irrevocably insecure nature of someone who had been touched physciclaly countless times and understood emotionally ever in his life.

"Shit-" His lips pulled away. "Am I reading this all wrong?"

"You're reading this all right. That's exactly why I don't think that we should do this right now."

"But-eventually?"

You wrapped your arms against his waist as a making up for the lack of response to the kiss. Feeling the way that his soft stomach meshed up against yours was the most inviting sense of comfort in the middle of the muddling of two tormnented people trying to love one another.

Your eyes rolled up as they fluttered closed wile you gave a quick breath-you loved how endearing and soft he felt. You could practically taste the family summer days that he had inside of him; inside of the both of you, of the heavy want to share in intimate life experiences, to share in a bonding rather than isolation of the details that made up real life.

But it wasn't evident in his speech. It was evident in his core-but he himself didn't quite believe it yet. Despite kissing him back, you could taste the feeling of his own lips against the sensation of yours- so warm and with a desperate comfort. There was something oddly fatherly about him-as if that side of his life had been taken away from him without experiencing it, but it was written all over everything he was, anyway. And you loved him, anyway.

You can practically taste the way of his own soft and husky voice, laden in discomfort that would wake you up every morning-could taste the way that his lips were pressed against yours while his arms wrapped around your sides with an equal amount of invitation against the side of your hips, pressing you against himwith a life that had been full of broken longing that seemed as if it had to gradually become a certain kind of narcissistic madness, just for the sake of having anything to live for at all. He had been feeding into his meainglessness, finally broken up as he wetn away from that soft and gentle peace and life and into the suffocating one he lived instead. And yet, despite his acceptance to be broken, his purity had endured beyond anything you ever could have imagined.

There were some aged lines on his skin, and you could physically feel yourself move your body just think of kissing the weariness of them. All that was within his touches as he kept his fingertips gripped against you, his fingers deep seated inside your skin with something that could only be from somebody that was only so caught up with being used and misunderstood emotionally and never seen to getting what he wanted, even if it was the very thing that destroyed him, and even if only for a little while.

His hands were wrapping up you skin as hesitancy gripped his lips. He pressed up against the side of your body with a tender spooning that was wrapped up onto the harder part of your upper torso, begging to be caressed by your hands. His eyes were a honeyed, simple desperate spell, speaking of the emptiness that you knew would never leave him alone, and that was the tragedy of knowing how it would feel to love him; and yet you longed for every new mundane lesson, every deep hur,t every complicated day and back drop; of every possible meaning.

His fingertips caught in between somewhere in your legs as his stocky thighs moved towards your middle part of your legs, body wrapped up around yours as his stout body eased across yours. He wanted to touch you-but there were too many broken patterns of what he was used to. It was only that self aware wisdom that would keep him from you tonight.

"Not tonight." Bojack breathed deep, something that was in between an acceptance and a tense maturity that was te only thing keeping him from spilling fully into the entirety of you craved to a maddening degree. "Okay."

"I'm nothing remarkable as anyone else-but I feel my indidaultiy, and it is incredible and irrpelacbale in the small maddening ways that indiavultiy is and is never seen because people don't really care for indudvauiltiy, only the idea of it. But I feel like it can be useful around you; not just a soulless waste of a life."

He paused for a moment, his eyes still searching yours.

"Can we still come and sleep together?" He shook his head as his eyes winced, tentative, adorable. "Not like that, but just-you know."

He curled the round of his stomach against yours, the plush cushion of it gently caressing against the side of your own body; and how lovable, how much of a family it felt, and how much did it feel like you were empowered for loving one another deeper for your flaws, the world and its malicousness that much less likely to pull you over into the bad when the both of you strnegthed yourself with something so humble ans good. Malicousness could desotry anything that was apart of the superfifical desires of he word; but nothing as pure as loving one unditonally and loving them in kind.

You lolled your head backward as you felt your hands wanting to grip his mane-to see the delicate lust of infatuation grace his own features. You wanted to be his. You found relief as you tugged on one of his black hairs-coarse but soft as it threaded it between your fingers.

"Of course we can."

You dared to kiss the front of his snout. What exactly you were tempting him away from, you didn't quite know yourself-you only knew that it wasn't something that should be completely granted to him on one crossfaded night. That was what he was used to, and how much that had broken him, just as the way that he was now, was something you refused to be apart of.

He let out something that seemed like relief, his snout nudging into the curve of your neck like a soft request for you to show aarenss of how much this could break or destory him. It was heartbreaking and adorable all at once.

"I do like you a lot, you know." His voice rasped against your neck, and the bumps on your skin shivered. "Doesn't matter if you want me to stay tonight or tomorrow or whenever. I know that I actually..want to. Mean it this time. If that's even a thing."

Your hands gently gripped up against the side of his mane, knowing that he was coming from the place of saying it, but you couldn't allow your own experience with drunken parties and burning intentions of the blurriness of alcohol to believe that he said it just yet. Perhaps it was the very reason why you were such opposites-you, knowing exactly what you wanted and when-and him, with his damaged emotionally and intelligent stumbling of desperation to find anything that could fill the void, was the exact reason why you would feel each other. Heal one another. You Knew from knowing what you wanted but never having it, and him from never knowing what he wanted and giving himself everything because of it-the very ironic reason why he would never what he needed.

"I love you, too." Your fingers ghosted down his mane until it met the soft plush of his back. "Go to sleep"

"Will you be here when I wake up? This isn't a hit and run, is it?" His husky voice was drained and fringed with fragile insecurity.

Your hand squeezed his fleshy hip.

"Today, tomorrow, and the next day. As long as you need me."

A soft, content humping breath of releif left his lips-adorable and content in its soft execution.

"Bullshit," he muttered. "But it sounds nice." His snout gazed your face as he pressed himself further against you-there wasn't anything further between both of you now. "Night, teaser."

You pressed a kiss to the white diamond on his snout. "Goodnight, Bojack."

"Call me Flapjack."

"Really?"

'No. But call me anything but Bojack. For tonight, anyway. I want to be someone else tonight."

Silence enfolded that was as telling as his insecurities were.

"I love you exactly as you are." You pasused as your face eased across his snout, and he gave a soft chuckle. "But I'll give you that fantasy tonight."

"Thanks," he rasped. "I appreciate it."

You would give him more than that, but for tonight were these simple promises enough.

"Don't be the buildings of the stoic and the superficial around you." Your began to drift off to sleep, the wrath of him rocking you to bed, and the both of you heading towards the ethernal indescriabele scape of black nothing for awhile. "Be the person who makes them. Don't be static and unfeeling and laundering afert the very superficial flaws of people and letting it destroy you. The more you believe what the world is and how it destroys itself, the more they can desotry you, because you are them. Take it in, learn from it, see it for what it is, not matter how lonely."

He shifted, his brawny and lovable shoulders easing under your touch. His low, rasoed voice, naturally charming and alluring, let out a breath of air.

"I've already seen people turned into buildings. I won't be one of them."

You nodded, knowing that at least for today, you had saved him from another day of destruction that the world would never stop trying to execute from lost souls like him beyond repair.

"You feel like spring. You can't help it. And it's beautiful. It doesn't need to change."

Bojack chucked. "You're really not helping with this whole wanting to bang you thing."

"It's true. I see it in you. You have an inherent spring inside of you that isn't going anywhere. And you should never let it go. I want to preserve it. Good days, bad days, and every day in between. It's only fair. For you. For everyone who knows you."

A sigh left his lips as he pressed it against your forehead.

"Is that ok, or am I too uncertain of what I want?"

You smiled bitterly. "I don't know. I guess I'm protecting some of my own fears, too."

Bojack gave a soft mumble. Another kiss to your forehead. It was charming with a grace that only an older man with experience had-and different this time, less insecure and feeling like an uncertain boyish essence, and more like the stoic nature of someone whow as mature, someone who was emtoionaly wise and insightful and would protect you; someone gentle in a sharp, someone to be admire.d

"But it's cute. You care. It's hard to care in a world that's so fleeting. That's why I like you. You see how temporary it all is, fleeting and never stopping. But it still feels worth it with you."

"Because it matters. It just does. We can't avoid it."

Bojack's snout tilted across your forehead. "Because people, no matter how flawed, are all we have. Devastatingly simple." He paused, the long feeling of his snout caressed agaisnt your face. "Right?"

You squeezed his arm.

"Right."

OOOOO

"Where did they go? I could have sworn I kept her here by my side! Is this what it's like to not know what you're doing? Because it is terrible!"

's hands were pressed on the sides of both his cheeks, eyes widened while he pulled at his bright fur with full tension. You wouldn't have been able to believe someone was so unnecessarily theatrical and dramatic so quickly, had it not been occurring right in front of you, and had he not been having his gibberish of his high pitched voice and wide eyes of dramatic fear for the past few hours since the moment Bojack had taken you to the party. You had been surprised at the suggestion, to put it lightly; Bojack had the air of someone who had been alive for long enough that he had lost all interest in the superficial noise of the world and its people. But you had been sullen, drawn in by the couch as you had curled in on yourself as the morning had gone on, and with a soft rasped suggestion that had raised your detached fog from where you were curled did you look up and meet the soft suggestion of his eyes, even under the dry stoic tone of his voice that had suggested it, and a small raise of his lip that suggested that he meant it when you asked him if he was sure.

"She can go her own way, right?" Your eyes turned up as you looked over. The muscles on his face treamored in thought. Defiance flashed in his eyes as a new thought entered his expression, though even that possessed a trace of a strange lighting innocent to it. And, somehow, even that was adding on your own strain of annoyance that was becoming thicker as the night went on; it had started when Bojack had left, eyelids lowered into a heavy dim reassurance as he looked you over and waved his hand in front of him while he told you with an exasperated rasped breath that he would be back.

That had been an hour ago; nearing two hours. To no surprise of your own was your own aggravation getting the worst of you the longer the night went on, nothing but the dancing bodies and enligthened eyes of the people while their hips leaned against one another as the night went on to keep the foggy trail of your eyes company, and the knowledge that Bojack and the small tightrope of relief that Bojack had given you on the tightrope of his existence that was the one thing keeping you from the dirty grim of an aimless lost lost life that was ahead.

"She knows." 's eyes turned to you, naive and innocent. "The entire point of marriage is to share with one another in every experience. To know and to follow each other. I know that we both agreed on that."

's hands were balled against his palms, and the glint of his frustrated eyes turned to you with his eyebrows lowered.

"I know that Bojack took my darling wife somewhere to drink." His head flew back to the crows, eyes winced as he looked over the crowd. "He always knows how to turn a bad situation into something that's even worse, doesn't he?"

His eyes roamed around the fairly polluted, purple tinted area. The crowd was dense with white chatter, as mindless as the crowd that surrounded the space.

"That guy. Does he know any limits?"

You tried to calm your fingertips from pressing too hard against your elbows with pressure. You had more of an idea of where the worn black eyed and tired man had gone from the wavering timid, drunken, whiskey smelling breath that had hit the side of your skin when he had kneed down next to you only about an hour ago. The wobbling air of his disposition had given away where he had gone and why- specifically when he had whispered to you in his husky, humored yet heavy voice, "Don't wait up. Going to go do some of the fireball drinking just to piss away some of this shitty afternoon, if you know what I mean?"

That warm body radiated something ancient inside of you wanting to hold him, but those luxuries that were so pure, enough that it seemed as if they would physically end your life and any coherent meaning of worthwhile existence if not taken eventually, was robbed within his wobbling lack of control, and his clear want to be away from you for a little while of that complicated narrative that came along ith heaviness and the loneliness of indidvaulity.

Disgruntled playfulness grazed his lips as he attempted to shoulder you, missing terribly, and though he meant to be casual and ironic, the denial of his torment had been still present in his eyes.

"You get it?"

Voice husky, whiskey laden, the very embodiment of what any would consider an ass for anyone with cloudy laden eyes who didn't see much of anything for what it actually was, and somehow through that, you felt and saw the opposite.

Though the realization was coming on you far too quickly, and you knew there was a sense of profound naivety to it, it certainly didn't feel that way. You would be his wife, his partner if he wanted; and what a humble but such truthfully and authentically laden purpose, for that was all that mattered at the end of the day. The meaning of being with him was a meaning that had been the most unexpected and fast thrown on your perception of existence, it felt like the easiest element that you had ever been introduced to. It was a pure,hard truth; to have lived without the melancholic but gentle feeling he gave you without for so long, and to know that the feeling was as temporary as much as it was more than likely to leave or to dissipate beyond recall if anything were to happen; and one that for you, and yet it was enough just to even know that this kind of feeling could ever exist at all. You had though your life a meaningless toll of below mediciocary for the way other people saw you, and it had been impossible for the perception to not affect you as your own person and to believe and to take on that truth, but that belief already seemed distant, or at the very least, matched. For you specifically, the grounding of the meaning was executed through the wobbly and insecure laden air of that plush and soft man.

He had let out a grunt as he had just barely managed to stop himself from tripping over and onto your shoulders. Your hand had gripped on the side of his fingers as you had steadied him, your worry for him already getting the better of you; and following it a tired, rich, deep unconditional warmth of knowing why he treated himself so terribly without a second thought. He had been especially disconnected and troubled when he had stumbled over to your embrace after what must have been a few drinks, followed by that lack of care towards anything that would happen to him, even after the past few days of trying to treat him as something precious. There has been something in his air that seemed heavy, thoughtful, and as he had stumbled into your arm with an awkward and clumsy grunt, otherwise intelligent eyes detached and wobbled, there was the entrance to try and speak it to comfort him, if only to make him feel a little less trapped in his head, and as his body had wobbled over to you with the rarity of allowing you to comfort him in hte detached drunk nature, you had spoken;

"It's alright. No matter what happens tonight, its' not your fault. Not really."

Bojack had snorted, turning his dry eyes up to yours as his eyes puffed while he looked you over.

"What?"

"The most tragic thing is the constant reaction of the emotional states of people around us and how nobody can really understand or predict how we feel about one another or how we affect each other at the end of the day." Your hands ghosted his arm as he winced and looked you over, ears lowered. "Everyone affects everyone, and it almost never has the affect it should or what people can predict long term. In this sense, you're not alone, neither in your damage or suffering."

He had gazed at you with those squinted, puggy black eyes that met chubby hands that grazed around your shoulder subconsciously. He was both entitled and timid to touch you all at once; such was the way of someone who had both a good heart that was surrounded by foggy mugginess of unfavorable cirusmctanes, both inward and out.

"Stay here. Let me take care of you," you tried.

"What? Who needs that? I'm not a baby." With that, his air had adjusted as he had lifted himself off of you, hand pressing on your breasts as he had stumbled over his feet while he had looked you over. "Christ." He stepped back to the side, feet walking forward as he snapped his hand to you lazily, drunkenly. "Cute, but-no. Not tonight."

You saw him trip over his feet again, and your hand caught his plush waist, a physical recall towards some strange impulsivity he had that drew you towards his determination and your endearment, grazing your fingers against it. You could have laughed, if it wasn't for the fact that there was a troubling conflict in who and what he was that demanded understanding and a somber gentle energy to meet his graceful and romantic melancholy; it could only be processed and taken in, and for the fact that an extension of his pain that was also your own, in everything he did; just as the way it was with warm and profound meaning, there was alos the backlash of the loss of it. "I could help you calm down a bit. Or at least try."

He had stumbled forward significantly, another awkward and clumsy catch from his hands just barely managing to carry his weight as he caught himself on your shoulder while he stumbled forward, though his eyelids were lowered and his feet were stumbling to you as he kept an abrupt grimance on his feautres, quickly followed by another awkward laugh drenched in conflict.

"Don't be crazy or overthink this." He waved his hands in front of him, stumbling back as he gave an abrupt grunt while he stumbled back. "I'm just having fun like the rest of these distracted idiots." He gestured to them, in the same drunken swaying way. "Nothing wrong with that."

You had stepped forward, eyes burning and turning across his in begging. "Don't do this to me."

"What-be me? Be the same thing I always am? Sure. I'll get right on that. Nice to know that you were clearly unaware of what you signed up for."

"You know what I mean."

"Do I? Must've missed the language course on what you mean."

You had felt your skin go hot, and there was a strange black pit in your stomatch that had overcome you as you had looked him over. "You know I'm just worried about you."

"Yeah?" His eyebrows quirked as he raised his lip upward, an odd savvy look to his expression as he had turned his eyes across yours; and then a blunt, dry;"well-some advice; Don't." He swayed to the left, eyes twitching and spazzing with a slight lack of control. "Just enjoy your party thing." He had stumbled over his feet further, turning his head over his shoulder as he had made his way closer to the wall of bodies. "That was the entire reason why I brought you here to begin with."

He had stumbled away, letting out a playful; "Hey-o! Look at all of you ladies dancing around tonight. Where should we get this crowd started?"

The intimacy and understanding of clarity between the both of you had been vivid enough that Bojack had given away what he had wanted without meaning to, with unfocused steps that still possessed a grace and a strange sense of navigation, though he wasn't self respecting enough to be aware of it, and the words for you to stay by him stayed on his slurred words and swaying limbs.

There were a multitude of reasons why the message was given to you, and you knew you would spend a lifetime, if you were lucky enough to spend that amount of time to have what you felt with him for as long as you did, to figure out what every one led to what end.

If you were that lucky. The sentiment was one that followed every course of action with being involved with Bojack. If he would care enough about himself to let you care for him, if you could stand how he was so used to not being cherished, if you could get him to act on it rather than to clumsily feel it and find an excuse to not believe it; if the navigation that made up every person in life could have even the vaugest sense of grounding and to fight for quality rather than lack of and to be taken down by te mjaorty who refused to believe for more.

If.

The word could become a string of leading from one island to another of thought concerning him.

There was a black against the edge of his eyes that spoke that he was going to get himself into some sort of trouble, and intended to, and all for the lack of respect he had towards himself. You couldn't stand telling him no, recognizing that, even with as spiritually appropriate as it felt with being his unofficial caretaker, if only for how you cared for him, it wasn't your place.

You were more than just his current partner, rather than him taking whatever temporary distance or distraction he was using you for. Already it had been a week, and the both of you had started to reveal, through small touches an the way he showed the most tender part of him that not even you could have guessed when he took you to the bathe and tenderly suggested with his fingertips playing to care for you how much it meant to want to build on a feeling that was more than a fleeting thought for meaning; the both of you felt the richness of it, the spiritual gift of a bond that was promised to no one, and that was why it was considered lucky.

There was a certain ancient richness to the way you can come to know one another, and though you knew he felt it, he didn't feel it enough to recognize that, for the first time in his life, he was resoundly, unapologetically, and truly cherished. He only acknowledged it in small waves of timid acknowledgement of even smaller actions, if even that, and when he did, it was only in the most intense moments of a drunken superior state where he was in detachment from the furthest parts of his reality; one he had long since mastered of being detached from in ways that were most comfortable to him.

You wouldn't give yourself the guidance to get him to stop the comfortability he fell into to escape whatever newfound heavy narrative he had used that night to justify pushing you away or your attempt for helping him. Human existenc ewas bent on trying to be taken away from pain in any way it was possible, no matter how unremarkable, and Bojack was only tripping into the same sickly narrative he always was in the way that was familiar to him.

There was always a different disconnect he discovered every time he fell apart, and every time was it required, if you wanted him to feel that cheirshment, to find in your own way of how to give it to him, if you could at all. Bojack could melt like someone who had long since been waiting for any amount of genuine tenderness; the jaded talk and wit that was clad in that maslcuine tone was just as much a part of him as much as any part of him was, but there was that eternal sense of helplessness that reached to a surreal formability, so rewarding to love on after so many years, a lifetime, even, of having it not been reached, or even caressed, or even seen, when it came down to it.

"You're dating that Bojack." Mr. Peanutbutter's tone was abrupt and forthcoming as he snapped his head over his shoulder and looked you over, trailing you out of the fog of your thoughts as you blinked, if only to try and leave that detached dryness in yoru eyes that came from the mugginess of your thoughts. "You must know something about all the negative narratives that he dressed up in his headspace no matter what anyone tells or gives him. That man is impossible-and normally I wouldn't mind, but when it comes to my wife? Come on."

"He's having a hard night." You began to step forward subconsciously as you began to follow , who was already taking to shoving his way through the crows as he gave a slight breath of a grunt, making his way forward as he mumbled under his breath, his perked in his abrasive tension. "I think this has been a lot for hi to take in."

"What? Drinking? Partying with women? That's practically his entire thing and lifestyle. Even he would know I know that!"

"Being with someone. Being dedicated to someone." Your hands were finding the side of your arms as you continued to walk your way through the crowd, where 's ears were perking upward further as he turned his head over the crowd, eyes searching timidly and desperately as his eyes turned over the bustling of the bodies.

"Well, whatever reason that he has for thinking that he has some reason for being so negative no matter what anyone gives to him, I know that he's not justified for reacting this way. He can't keep making his problem everyone else's'. He certainly can't bring my wife into it."

"I understand." Your head ducked under where an arm waved out with a tray balanced on the woman's hand, the tray swinging over your head as you ducked yourself down and kept yourself as kept within yourself as you could manage. "I'll try to talk to him."

"Please do. If he keeps pulling this, I don't know what I'll do."

As stumbling and as reckless as his actions were, it was in that recklessness that your grounding and formability was able to meet into his sabotaging lack of care. It was in his recklessness towards himself and his clear impsulivity of not caring of what happened to him to met into the profound need you had to want to care for him, and within that was there the most deep sense of something beyond even love. It was something ancient, desperate, true and folded into something that had occurred before even awareness of why you both were drown to one another had been formed-timeless and enduring, not unlike the way it was with a relationship with yourself.

Bojck was used to be talked down on in the same way talked about him; down on as if he were more of a stereotype to be tramped on with high status abusive celebrity form, and with a sense that he was someone that was more so meant to be talked about than the idea that he was a real person with a multiple of emotions and intentions.

"I bet he feels like he's walking blind in life. No one has been on the same side as he has or even tried to speak the same language as him that he must feel trapped in where he's coming from. Inhuman, in some ways; or at least on a different plane of existence from everyone."

"If that's true, when you get home, you need to talk to him. I can't have this guy keep gripping his hands into the things that mean something to me." There was a tone of understanding to 's tone, and he placed his hands on his hips as he turned and looked you over. "Please. If he's finally going to have commitment in his life, then there should be some positive changes for once."

"I want to." Your eyes turned down, mouth askew in thought as your hand squeezed across your arm. You closed your eyes as you eased your palm against the font of your face, closing your eyes as your plam threaded across your hand. "I feel like any pain that he's going through is from the observation that life is just a mesh of little blocks of activities, and they can be used nd cluttered as much as you want, moved around, embellished, celebrated, destroyed and built back again; but at the end of the day life is just those small combination of blocks, and he feels the emptiness around them too much, to put it lightly. I want to believe that whatever pain that he's in or feeling, that I can help him to feel it, accept it, see it as a companion and teacher to teach him lessons and tools mentally and physically every day rather than something to be feared and destroyed." Your fingertips curled against your lips as your eyes turned forward. "That's what I had to do, anyway."

"I get what you're saying. But this is my wife. I saw him grab her by the wrist and pull her to the side with his ears lowered and that sad apology in his eyes. He knew what he was doing."

"Of course he did." Your eyes turned, detached and foggy with a dim look as your eyes turned over the several doors behind the bodies that poked out between the curving of the dancing and moving people now and then. It as clear that Bojack was under the idea through the narratives he had been fed that he was meant to be the cherisher, which, you had long since learned, was impossible for someone who had been deprived of love since the moment he had been born. Under the complicated drunk surface was a tired and trembling precious essence, and to cradle it was to be cradled in kind. He would give what he received, but how little he received it to begin with; and you knew tonight was only one of many of trying to figure the complication of that puzzle out and what it means going forward.

"Don't you think he's getting out of line?"

's gaze turned to you as the high pitch of his voice raised up, eyes trembling with dramatics that were clad in genuine over the top, but sincere, emotion. "He knows how to do it, too."

"Do what?"

"Make things complicated. Mess things up for reasons that no one will ever be able to keep up with. And every time. If he got my precious Diane into trouble. I'm going to make sure he never gets into the hands of anything important to me again."

"Really going at it tonight with the idea of him walking off with her?"

chuckled, albeit darkly. "He's fantastic. Don't get me wrong. But don't pretend like anything that's important to me should be near him. Maybe anyone. Not that I wouldn't help him, of course I would, but when he crosses these bounrdies, I don't know how to feel. It's like a television show with too many subplots and crossovers. Who can keep up?" took the energy of the both of you and your muddled unceritnity as to what to do going forward as gave a breath, eyes wincing as he shoved his hands beside the woman and the man grinding against them as he made to shove his body, fit and modled, through the crowd.

"If I do find him, maybe it wouldn't be-neitley out of the question to bring up the idea that he shouldn't drag you into this."

Your eyes flared up and widened, giving off a reaction larger than you meant to as you began to follow the small path through the space that made up the people jostling against you, thankful that your body was small and feeble enough to not be touched.

"What?"

"I just mean-" 's voice hitched as he gave you a flash of pointed teeth, eyes gleamed as he continued to ease his way through the crowd in something that was confidently timid, but still with a bashfulness that spoke he knew he was going over the line. "-You don't want to get caught up in all this, right? Don't you have enough problems?"

"I'd like to be abe o figure that out for myself." You swore as one of the fis stripper's arms almost knocked you over, and your eyes flared as you watched the constant moving impulsivity of the people continue to jostle around you. "I think we both deserve to be able to have time for that much, for ourselves.

"Yeah-sure. But-" waved his hand behind him in a small circle as he continued to duck his way and shove his hand gently by the curves of the people around him."He seems like the kind of guy who needs to be kept away from what he doesn't understand. Marriage definitely being one of them. I'm doing it for him!"

You turned yourself away, arms firmly embedded into your chest, as if you could keep your concern from whatever way that quick feeling of the meaning and healing he gave you that came over you so unfathomably fast swept over you. You kept your head turned to the side as you continued to ease yourself through the bodies.

"Just keep any issues you have to yourself. Please. The last thing he needs is someone breathing down his neck."

"If the guy goes off like this, can you blame me? He could at least communicate."

"And you don't know what he's like when someone bothers him excessively? He can take care of himself." You paused, already knowing the words weren't true-at least, not to the extent of what you would want to think ,but you at least wanted them to be. There was, admittedly, some twisted truth to them; the man had spent the majority of his time in his life alone, though whatever sanity and stability within himself he had left to show for it was worn and thin.

"At times."

"Sure. And I'm a successful director white lab who's made several legends of films of grand multitude!"

voice was pitched in an annoyed way that was so boyish that it was almost comical, in that thrill and causal way he had that still spoke of a deeper frustration under the layers of his natural nativity, and an abrasive denial and anger of disappointment and mixed emotion, despite whatever attempt he was trying to exclude of a lack of care.

"It's only for one night. Isn't the entire point to have a little fun and do things different for the night?"

"As long as he doesn't damage anything too much on the way to wherever he's going, if anywhere. Knowing him, he's probably too drunk off his rocker to even know. The poor guy. He can do what he wants, sure. But he needs to keep my wife out of it."

"He'll take care of her. He's impulsive, but he has good intentions."

"I hope you're right, because I can't stand this feeling. He's gotten into enough trouble with everything as it is. Doesn't he ever give it a break?"

"I'm sure he just wanted to talk."

"Yeah, and once again, I've directed multiple successful films and I'm in broadway! I know I sound cynical, but I'm actually just trying to meet you at this game we're playing where we say things that we wish were true, but aren't. It's a bit fun, but worrying. Not unlike trying to look for my wife, who, and I'll state it again, is missing in a way I know she never would without his influence."

"Don't get too in your head about it, anyway. He'll come back. He won't cause too much trouble, more than likely." Your hands gripped across your arm as you tired to keep the sickliness of your inecuirty grounded; the emotional weight that came with concern for Bojack was heavier than even your worst day of survival. As it turned out, having something to live for was far heavier than taking care of yourself just for survival. "Not tonight."

You knew the words were only part way true; one of the side effects of the intimacy that you had with Bojack-though sometimes even that term felt too generous on the most unpredictable days; the idea that his intentions of what he did and how he did it were always far too unclear. It seemed as if it extended even to himself; not even he wanted to know what he did and how he did it to his full capacity. As a result, he was left murky and unpredictable, and uncertainty was met at best with any given interaction or event that conceded him.

But there were golden shards of his heart, and they spoke of a purity of a true and irreparable thing that was almost impossible to see present in the majority of people who only half felt, if anyone at all, from the moment you had molded the puffy laden dakr of his under eye bags that were permanently embedded in the most worthwhile parts of your own inner eye that felt they were meant to be infatuated with him.

You could you see the connection of the fresh feeling of a precious heart and mistakenly tender emotional beauty that hadn't been made for the world he was surrounded by-no one in their messiness of humanity was meant for the perception of a lifestyle where flaws weren't allowed and messes ignored. He was much even more so ill suited to the life he had been given.

It was addicting to know his brokenness, filling up the empty void where there had only been your owan understanding of it, the isolation as terrible as the pain itself. It was nothing less than the freshness of humanity, but it only came in soft nights of sheets and fingers pressed between fleshy curves, softly raspy mumbled nights of lips-when his eyes were drenched in the wrinkles under his drunken exression, too crossfaded too childlike to worry or concern himself too much with anything except for the acceptance of how you wrought yourself onto him with a love that felt as if it had been trying to speak before you yourself had even known it existed. There was a relief in that meaning you gave one another; not from the hurt of the world or even from other people or structures and expectations, bur rather from the profound richness of relief away from the most terrifying revelation of all; the emptiness of existence outside of that being all there was outside of the bond.

's prediction was distant, at best, from what was truly going on with the entanglement of the brawny skinned, dark eyed handsome exhausted stumbling manchild of strange unpierced wisdom. His disconnect from seeing where Bojack was coming from witb what he did and why he did it was one you couldn't blame him for; Bojack was, in many capacities, impossible to read, and it seemed as if he preferred the isolation that came with it. Not being known, after all, was an addicting feeling for the insecure.

Your own disconnect to Bojack was intertwined with your undeniable infatuation for him in all his stumbling lost, broken lack of protection towards himself. Though there was that rich mutual feeling, he was determined to run from it, quite literally, in this case. It had taken nights of drawing him in, eyes squinted through half sleep, body messily entangled in the sweaty sheets that were half entangled around his body, plush and lovable, teeth poked, ears delicate, selfish and erratic and undeniably lovable, hand slung over his stomach as eyes baggy with sleep as he allowed himself to believe that you could be rested in one another for while.

You had both slept well the past week; in that deep, profound peace that was forgiving and gentle rather than broken up and troubled, and for the first time in your life as your body sunk into the mattress, your headspace had felt clear when you woke up in the morning.

But not amount of sleep was stopping you from realizing that, in an oddly painful and ironic way, it was partially others' inability, or complete and blatant lack of care of seeing anything in him, that you felt that almost maddening sense to make up for the lack of insight that he had from others. He had an inability to see himself that was the definition of a precious, rich imagination and humanity found in very few. It had taken a long life of tiring relationship and superficial manners to be desperate enough to feel, experience, and know what was inside of him, and he had communicated in his own wordless actions that he felt much the same, though it seemed as if he had less inciation to outwardly act on it, as if suffocation and defeat, and the black that came with it, was preferred.

You felt a compulsion towards him in the sense that you wanted to follow him through whatever dissociated and born black pattern he had, and you felt a certain relief, for lack of a better word, as most things in regards to him were indefinable and lacked coherent ability to place any containment of label on, that what he suffered through was something you could offer a remedy to; at least you hoped. Hope seemed futile and few and far between the older you got, and yet it was his jaded and sarcastic exasperation and ironic detachment and your own personal form of a mirror of a lack of hope that was the reason why you had found it in one another.

You never wanted to stop him anyway, no matter how messy or stumbling. Whatever came to him the most naturally was what you wanted for him. There was no other way to love him; you wanted him to breathe as he was, to stumble with him in whatever way he was, knowing healing would follow if you only allowed him to breathe as was and dealt out love to him in the way he needed it, especially within the regard that part of his dysfunction was from lack of emotional needs, compassion, empathy, neve being met to begin with. As a result he was rendered, in many ways, as a desperate and gripping child, snatching for another that could give him the response to needs of which had never been met.

Nothing that you had done so far anything to do with telling him what he could or couldn't do; you knew that to try to control his act like that, or of any attention of it, would only lead to disruption of what was barley distilled into whatever little peace he managed enough as it was, and anything that was worthwhile could never be controlled, much less someone with in tune with their uniqueness as much a the fire that was the unpredictable, grateful contradiction of a manchild that was both confident and established in the functional ways that counted-but just as well some uncertainty that was trembling in any given context, and more than likely to implode if push too wrong towards one length of where whatever balance in him shouldn't.

"Bojack!" Your head turned forward as you ducked your way through more of the crowd. "Bojack!"

"Oh, forget. At least until I can find where the sweet precious place where my darling wife went." 's hands cramped beside his chest as he shouldered his way through the crowd. "If I know anything about my wife, it's that she would at the very least choose a reasonable door and not one of the heroin addicted ones. Unless Bojack influenced her to go somewhere else, in which case, who knows! Of course!"

You felt a jolt go through your body at the suggestion. Everything he did was more so of a step onwards towards every decision he made until you were able to reach a certain conclusion of where he could help himself, or at the very least if you could find even one sense of relief given, whether for himself or for you, though there was hardly any difference ever since you had come to realize that whatever he felt, it was intertwined with your own emotion. Ironically, by having everything he was wrapped into everything you were, you had never felt more human or in control in a way that mattered before in your life.

Though the destruction tendencies were, admittedly, wearing you beyond what even the most wretched day you had experienced before ever had.

His comfort was your own in whatever way he went, in however he went there; it felt as if, in an odd way, you had been going towards him in an odd twisted guidance in the spiritual way of how you had stepped from one place to the next of the phases of your life, with each new one building on top of one another that led you to be the leaning of what he needed. The issue was that he wasn't used to, or therefore could accept, cherishment. He had long since internalized that the only thing that he believed in was to be treated by the spoonful narrative of what he had been dealt; to be the label of an asshole and the 'worth', so to speak, that came along with it. Nothing else would process in his mind, not in any genuine or real capacity. And the thought of emotional intelligence of other people from his end seemed promised to be impossible from his experience.

From your end of things, it was enough for you simply to be there to be his guide and lover; but in these foggy and black moments where he chose to be a sick and stumbling drunk, rather someone who was irreparable and bonded to you and responding to it with a belief that he accepted and wanted, you knew that the bittersweetness that came along with loving someone that didn't believe in cherishment, or that it could be dealt, was at times more bitter than it was anything else, if only because of how you loved him, and of those bittersweet laden eyes of dark intellect and tender lost boyishness that melded all at once.

"Better just to let him have at it. It won't matter for long. He'll be back." Your hands caressed against your arms, and if anything, you were just trying to find any sense of holding back from shoving himself into the space where Bojack and Diane had found their messy reprieve for a little while.

"Oh, ok. Of course. I'll take your word for it. Am I a dump founded in America, because I'll be dumbfounded if that ends up being true. Bojack coming back from trouble-willingly? Part of the entire ways I've been able to help him throughout the years was me knowing he can't."

"Well, where do you think she would be?"

"Does it look like I know?" 's eyes snapped over to you with a red flair of emotion in his eyes. "If I was able to know something like that, I would have used that to my advantage by now. The very last thing I wanted to happen was something like this!"

's comment, one of which suggests the idea that he disliked the inherent associated presence of Bojack or anything to do with him, or that he was one worthy of such consideration, was a common reputation of the partner you had come to love.

You didn't fall into your frustration with what he said, though a certain disassociation came with hearing the messily wrought statement that was one of countless of being Bojack's partner that, if it had taught you anything so far, or even just with being strongly associated with him within the narrative of your inner emotion, it was that it was certainly a strain to be attracted to someone so deeply that had such an inherent disconnect to any support around him.

"Oh, but I'm sure you know." 's hands cramped across his chest as he continued to walk his way through the rest of the crowd, standing on the end of the borderline of it, ears perked up vaguely as he turned his eyes over the doors that were made low and dim with the purple light of the club. "I can't imagine how low someone who's been homeless their entire life feels. This is probably royalty to people like you."

"That is-one way of putting it." You paused as your pressed your lips together while you tired to fight the same strain of that fight inside of you that you felt from always being talked to as if you were small. seemed oblivious, head nodding in agreement as he contuiend to look over the doors.

"Of course it is. What other way is there to put it? It would only take less than a nanosecond of looking at how out of place you feel here with someone so familiar with riches. Why would Bojack want to keep a little lost thing like you just stumbling around here?"

You tired to keep your air calm, tuning into your own respect as much as you were able to. If you had manifested anything inside of you that was worthwhile when you had started to see a new layer to the temperament of the world the way that you did whenever you were introduced to any new worthwhile human experience, it was the act of getting used to no one respecting yourself, and now, your partner.

"I don't mean this the wrong way or anything-but I'm glad Bojack found someone that can at least not only put up with behavior that most woman wouldn't, but also someone lower than him in people's eyes so he dosen't have to feel inferior." chuckled as he looked over his shoulder to you, walking forward beside the doors. You only gave a curt nod as you continued to follow him down the hallway. "You might be the best match for him yet-and there's been a lot of people coming and going around this guy's island for I don't even know how long."

"Good to know."

"You're welcome. You know, I never even knew Bojack was capable of being reflective enough to know that he had to lower his standards enough to finally find someone he was truly calm with. It feels good to know that he might have finally realized that!'

Your eyes turend as you rolled your shoulders, trying to keep your energy and focus on the doors beside you as you continued to walk your way down while you followed down the hallway. Behind every door was there small talk and rustling on the other side of it; the sounds of low talk and whimpering and the sounds of sexual advances along with whispers and talk through the cracked half open doors.

You had long since learned what it felt like to have nothing in regards to people's approval or acknowledgment outside of the shell of comfortability they gave themselves that offered them just enough empathy to feel good about themselves with the uncomfortably of being around the unhinged around you, but not enough to offer anything that could have gave anyone outside of the comfortability genuine progression.

As you were coming to realize, it was much the same with Bojack; riches hadn't deprived that from him.

As unsatisfying as it was, there was an odd and sick twisted joy whenever you realize no one was giving him that deeply needed empathy that he had been deprived of in such detrimental ways that it was a miracle he wasn't on the brink of madness before you had ever seen that glint of a precios rarity in his almond black eyes. There was an irony to the dynamic-the more people talked down on him, the more it enflamed your desire to protect him, and even further still did you fall deeper in love, knowing that the preciousness of what you gave him was just as much a gift to your purpose as much as any healing he could have wrought from it.

Whether or not you had a purpose was something that was always battling in you-you didn't know if you had one or ever would, but for the first time did it feel as natural as much as the bad did.

What you saw in him was rare and true to your own eyes, and to speak of the constant apology you gave him for being so low yourself would have endeared even him to a certain disgruntled questionability-he had that glint of judgeemnt in his eyes, whether he admitted it or not; or maybe it was a black of trust from your end. Either way, you didn't want ti trigger the balance of the black intelligent sharp chemsitry in his eyes that spoke of a certain insight that could be pushed one way or the other at any given moment.

"Oh, I'm not sure. All these doors look the same." frowned as he turned and looked to the door, tapping a yellow fingertip by his lip as he looked over the door in concern. "But Bojck would be the kind of man to push my wife into one that is especially scratched and broken up." His ears perked as he looked up one of the doors he was standing against. "This one sounds like it just contains another meth snorting couple in it. And the scratches give it away, too. No matter what kind of influence my darling Diane might be under, it would not be something like this."

No matter how lowly even the people who cared for Bojack spoke of him, that desire to be by the soft, film and sweat ridden meaning between one another under the sheets was as strong as it had ever been; that soft humble and lovable familia feeling.

Somehow, the low temermant only made you want to protect him even further; to speak to how you saw how his twisted and unfortunate luck that had led him to make the desperealty ingrained decisions that came from ill fated luck that would have given any person with any noteworthy human nature a certain brink of madness, most especially because of it so evidently resulting in the self loathing headspace he expressed, whether he meant to or not-that he didn't believe that he had any deserving of being protected from anything.

You would never grow tired of showing him how wrong you saw him as, or would ever stop using whatever naturacility of letting him be who he was until, through a slow and gentle progression, you could bring him to the belief of what he truly was; that tender and precious cherished lover and twisted golden heart that had been pushed to element of narcissism for the sake of being able to go to whatever relief of lack of worth he could find.

"Let's go in the back. The back door. Check each one until we find the one we think they're in. You can come with me."

"Yeah? And then what?" 's eyes turned as he winced downward and looked you over. "I'm so angry that I'm not even sure how I should even go about talking to my wife at this point."

"You're the one who invited him. Maybe you'll be able to talk him out of it. Whatever 'it' is."

's face had a uncharastically concerned frown as he began to shove his way through the crowed, indicating with his head for you to follow you.

"I invited him because I wanted to meet you. When I first called up Bojack a couple of nights ago, he was his usual self; cynical, judgemental, pushy, and as always I pushed himself to the brink for him to open up-and what do you know, it worked! At first I just wanted to pat myself on the back for doing a clearly good job and for even making the guy open up to begin with; he started to almost sound soppy, and I was like, , can you believe it! You managed to make the most miserable person alive sound soppy! But then he started going on about how he had found this new girlfriend and as he talked-it was undeniably clear that any joy he was having was because of you. I've never heard anything like it before from him!"

"He did?" Your eyes turnd up, and gave a soft chuckle as he nodded and contuiend to walk his way forward, eyes turning over from door to door.

"You bet he did. Believe me, I get that guy out of his impossibly low and grumpy toned voice as much as I can when I can, and I consider it an accomplishment when I do even half that much. But the way he talked when you entered the conversation? Priceless. Like getting an age old grump out of his hole."

Your eyes turned down, and you felt the blood rush through your cheeks, your fingertips gripping across your arms in a bashful reflection as you fluttered your eyes forward.

"That's sweet."

"This place may look like a set full of extras who work for free that I silently judge for being desperate to show on camera, but it's actually just a bunch of people who are partying! We'll be able to find them through this place somehow. Even someone as low as you will be able to find their way through this mess and get someone to answer your questions if we try hard enough. We might have to ask a few dancers. Of course they're here somewhere. They were here, they said they would go somewhere, so they're probably somewhere. That's how moving works." chuckled, turning his head forward and through the cracked open doors as his ears kept perked up while he ducked his body forward through the cracks of the doors, then gave a slight light chuckle as he contuiend to walk his way down the hallway. "At least, last time I checked."

"No. You would be right.'

"Right! Sorry, I had a few drinks. I always forget. Moving and then stopping. One can't exist without the other. Incredible!"

You tried to ignore your frustration; at this point,it mostly was emitted from broken up worry that hardly made sense to you other than the knowledge that there was no dispelling it except through action, even if action ended up leading you to some unfavorable answer that you would have rather not known. As much as you were desperate to be able to find Bojack, you also knew that what was behind closed doors was crack and heroon and other various substances that you couldn't even begin to imagine; and Bojack had, whether you admitted it or not, chosen it over you. The concept and realization did made you feel a black pit of knowin that this was only the start of the introduction to who you had already latched onto.

"If I were my wife, where would be the first place that I would want to say where I was going, without me knowing where my hypothetical version of who I am outside of who I am by pretending I'm my wife is?"

"Let's check the back." You repeated it again, your eyes turning over to where the door on the very last side of the hallway was meeting against your eyes as you looked over the long hallway to it. "I have a feeling."

's ears perked, eyes glinting."The back? She wouldn't go in the back. She knows better." He turned to you, muscles on his face furrowing as he looked with over with a heat in his eyes. "That's the place where it was established a long time ago that that was the place where people go who really shoot it up. The last door has ever stimulate in the book!"

"She's drunk. And, which you've made clear, she's with Bojack, which automatically causes trouble. Right?"

's eyes widened, his ears perked as he shot himself upward, timid and rigid. "I can tell you meant that as a jab, but I absolutely agree with you! It all makes sense." He clapped his hands together as he turned over to the hallway, making his way down it as his speed began to turn up. "Let's check the back, pronto!"

You tried to keep towards the wall of the club, your frustration and general feeling of discontentment growing. It wasn't lost on you that you had a tendency to grow more impatient, disgruntled the longer you were away from what most at the presence of the party would consider the last person anyone would expect to excel peace on you, but you had long since grown tired of being concerned about what was common perception. It had hardly mattered, and one relatability that you shared with the timid gray eyed horseman was that both of you had reached an age where concern over other's thoughts had long since been drowned out by your own truth, which lead you both to the answer of following what was far more satisfying than any criticism or expectation .

If only Bojack hadn't been so timid, tied and with that tender uncertainty and wrecked up by common opinion that he was taken away from acting on it without destroying himself in that denial of detachment, usually in the form of his stumbling alcoholism now.

"Excuse me," you grunted as you shoved yourself through several of the dancing bodies that were jamming against the purple laden wall, your hands grazing against sweating hips that you were sure would meet plenty of superficial intimacy by just as equally drunk and distracted hands. No doubt, the majority would be fulfilled to their extent of completion of whatever distracted hole they were trying to fulfill by the end of the night, and you had long since grown out of enving their chaotic lifestyle. Boring but tired, you preferred the more consistent admittance of your spiritual exhaustion.

You didn't know why anyone at the sweat laden party was doing what they did, admittley, but you had seen enough progression of red tinted and sweaty eyes and even more shrieking messes of slobbered and squinted eyes to get the general idea of where a good majority were healing with the stumbling of their lifestyles.

You knew just from shoving through the tongue throated lambs that stuck their tongue down the throat of the twisted whale woman, and ducking under a brunette with her hands twisted under the curls of a boar that even just being around such disgruntled meainglessness and emptiness was going to leave your bones sore and your body tired by by the end of the night. Ducking and shoving your way through the particularly loud and boisterous crowd was damaging the last of your patience, but you tried to find as much control as much as you were able.

The main idea of any motivation that you had towards your lack of patience was excelled further by the idea of the worry of that stumbling and drunken, rapsy laden and tired eyed manchild that was heaven for you to cradle, especially when his soft and lovable hips pressed against your palms after a long day of whatever chaos he had allowed himself to ensue in.

"Bojack?" Your words were naturally dressed in concern that executed the tenderness of what you felt. You could hardly hear yourself amongst the white murmuring of the crowd surrounding you, or above the chattering and blasting noise of the music. You started to feel a lack of sense of the logic of what you were doing. Your hand pressed against the corner of one of the doors, and you peeked inward, and ducked your head out jut as quickly when you saw naked skin of an orca and a skinny man entangled into the bed with naked body against naked body under an orange light.

"Oy-shit-" The skinny man entangled under the orca woman abruptly raised himself upward, and as he looked over your skinny and unattracttive skinny body, the man's eyes widend as a heat flashed over his expression while his pale hand gripped by his sheet, snapping his body upward as he looked you over. There was a judgeemtn and heat in his eyes, expression furrowing as he looked you over.

"Get the hell out of here, druggie! Blow ya dirty hips somewhere else!"

The orca woman, her hips slender and het body clearly under the knife if only from the fact that the curves of her body defined her naturally chemistry, snapped her head over to where you were standing beside the door. Something flashed in her eyes that was the same sentiment if disgust, and the large form of her head out of proportion with the curves of her body snapped over as he gave you a grimance of her expression.

"What the hell are you doing in a place like this? Who associated with you?"

You shut the door, and repeated the process for three more doors. You could hear the way they contuiend to mutter to one another in their disocntment, and you closed your eyes as you rolled your shoulders back, turning your head over to where was snapping his head over into the second door beside yours.

"Darling? Are you in here? There's that sweet perfume smell that I know so well. Oh-no, I'm sorry. You are wo strangers in the middle of coaine and intercourse. My apologies."

A soft chcukle that came from his lip as he stepped his way back and waved to where you could hear a disgruntled that came from the people behind the door. He contusion to chuckle as until he closed the door fully, then his face lwoered as he kept his hands beside his wrists as he gazed downward, ears lowered.

"Am I tripping on some smoke right now, because I'm pretty sure we tripped up any opportunity to see an end to this." pressed a hand to his forehead, fingers gripping the yellow of his fur as his eyes turned downward in troubled conflict. "I swear, if we don't-"

You raised up a hand sharply. There were two last doors that were at the end of the various rooms until it led to the main exit. You made your way between the two of them, tuning in on the sounds coming from behind both doors. If you had to see another entanglement of naked bodies, you knew you would head home, call Bojack, and if he didn't reply, he more than likely wanted to be alone, and though it would have ended you for the night to give him isolation, you knew you couldn't force him outside of something of what he didn't want.

Just as you were about to give up on any coherent sounds that gave away that unmistakable voice, you heard that familiar chuckled lazy, oddly grateful rasp that you already knew like the back of your hand. You smiled as you took a shaky breath of relief, surprised even at yourself at the sheer amount of comfort that fell through you that you had found him.

"Don't take it too seriously. You drink the bottle until you black out, and then you go out and forget you exist until the dumb party with all this mindless chaos is over. It helps with whatever lame situation you're in, I promise."

Your heart skipped; his natural response to sabotage through misery was a suspicion that you had held, and now that it was confirmed that you were more of an expert of his uncomfortable nature, it only propelled the desire to go to him further.

You turned your eyes over to , and gave him a curt nod. You inficated towards the doors.

"One of these," you mouthed.

His eyes searched yours. "I'm sorry, is there a reason why we're being quiet about this?"

You snatched your hand in front of your throat, your action for him to quiet. 's eyes darkened, and then he shrugged, giving you a nod of understanding, though the doubtful look of his ignorant confusion didn't leave his face.

"Oh, shit.' That low, cynical voice that matched the low tone of Bojack in terms of its natural cynical and realistic was enough to make your throat dry as you paused beside the door. "I don't know if I drank or smoked too much, but I can already here my husband's voice."

"What? Annoying you?"

"Not annoying." There was a sound of a clang of a bottle, enough for you to abruptly step your body back as you looked over at in panic with the message to keep himself calm as his own eyes flew and widened up in surprise and panic."More so like the ideal tone of someone who's just precious and pure enough that it both makes me ashamed for every way I'll always fail at being that and making me feel pride that I'm ever associated with him to begin with."

Bojack gave a messy, almost snorting chuckle, and your hands grasped across your arm as you stepped back, eyes dim as you looked over the door that was still firmly closed-at least for now.

"What, you think you're not good enough for him, is that it?"

"Something like that." There was the sound of a bottle being thrown against the wall, and you winced as your hands gripped further by your arms. A tenderness, authentic and at ease, entered her tone as she continued; "I don't want to be drunk and spirlaing into mania and loathing. I want to go out, find him, pull him against me and have him tell me that I'm worthy of him and that everything will be ok. You know?"

"Absolutely." Bojack's voice was drunken, gruff, and your heart stopped for a moment at the blunt sound of it. "Well-maybe a little."
You could imagine his lovable disposition and gentle air-the way he probably pinhed two of his fingertips, his puffy eyes winced and ears lowered, his chubby hand against t he curve of his stomach as he spoke. Your heart increased, and though, as you had long since become accustomed to in your life, you were still fighting abrasive and terrible black drops and the anxious anxiety that you carried through just barley surviving throughout your life, for the moment that affection came over you that the tumbling flaws of his tone and body.

"Yeah? Why's that?" A bottle kicked. "I saw you brought a new girl here."

"She's got this uh-thing going on. Weird scenario. But she seems depthful, sweet-insighful. Obviously nothing to be spoken for in terms of being able to survive this world easily, but-she has a lot going on in those weird, wretched tired red eyes."

"She dosne't seem like your type."

"Honestly, I'm not sure if I have one. I don't know if I ever did. But this woman-she-she dosen't annoy or bother me. It's-werid."

"Someone not annoying you."

"Yeah, I know. Crazy. But I feel it. I woudln't say that we're married for life or even laying witht he idea of long term commitment-I can never do it for more than five months before some issue comes up-but, as far as doing small little things spirnkled along the way goes, I'd say this is a good way to go."

You turned your eyes back over the last door that hung towards the entrance; you heard that undeniable chuckle emitting from the door again, dark and raspy laden with whatever trouble man was emitting through his tone.

You began to inch your way to the door, half opened with a few inches with the light of the purple atmosphere was flowing out from it. You tapped your hand on the door. Even just the thought of his black mane being disgruntled and entangled, with troubled and conflicted eyes and dark black bags and deeply entranced wrinkles and that bumbling form of a bloated stomach from too much drinking was enough to make you feeling something that was an allurement of softness, and you wanted to go to him, protect him, in whatever way he would allow. To do anything else felt wrong, as if it went against an inherent purpose you had, and though Bojack himself would have patronized you for the fact, hardly being a believer in spirituality, you still felt that way, and you hoped you would get to a point where he could feel enough to feel and breathe it the same.

"Bojack, sweetheart?" There was another raspy grunt, and the sound of Diane swearing under her breath while the sounds of disrupted movements began to trail through the door.

There was a tension of sweat and sex that came from the door, and you breifly felt a flash of a narrative of those two troubled souls falling prey to impulsive sex; you felt your heart fall to your stomach. You turned your head over towards ; his eyes were conflicted in his own disgruntlement, a clear disapproval on his face.

"Shit-that isn't who it sounded like, right?" Diane's voice was low and questioning as she stumbled over her feet, and the low rasped grumbled sounds of Bojack began to follow as he knocked over the glass.

"No way. We specficlaly did the one hardest to find to avoid that very reason."

Your head turned as he wined as you looked over . "In there."

"In there? My darling wife wouldn't be there. She has good taste. If she was going to go somewhere to get drunk, or to do anything in general that has to do with letting loose, which I wouldn't really believe because she's too good for that and she would absolutely let me know, as she has a good amount of trust in me, which is very high and very much something that I know she would act on, it would probably be somewhere a little bit more hidden. Dignified! She's smart. Especially if she wanted to hide from somebody that was searching for her."

You rolled your eyes and only granted him a curt nod to where there was whispering ebtween Diane and Bojack, Bojack letting out a disgruntled breath as he rasped and hitched and kicked his feet against he glass, Diane following with the soft swears under her lips. There was still no coherent reply coming from the other side of the cracked door, but you would recognize that raspy mumbling from Bojack anywhere, even if you had been rendered useless; his presence and the way you read him touched you that way.

"Ok-Ok-" Bojack's voice was high pitched as you heard him kick the bottles. "Don't be too obvious. Just because you're drunk off your ass doesn't mean you can't at least try to handle your whiskey, Diane. Don't embarrass a true drunk."

"Sorry, it must be the two inch bed we're sleeping on that gives away the fact that I can hardly move. Or the fact that I've consuemd enough whiskey that I van barely see straight, much less think it."

"Diane, don't be whiny. You saw the bed the same way I did the moment you came in. And don't give us away, either, ok? I came here because I didn't want her to see me as the mess I am. I'm trying to play pretend for as long as I can before reality of how stupid and mundane our relsitonship si once she sees what a bumbling idiot loser I am. I'll be fine, but once it sinks in for her, she's gone. I'm putting that off for as long as I can."

"Then why did you drink?"

"Because I hate the fact that this situation is stressing me out, obviously! Since when do I not run away from my problems in the most sabotaging way possible? Try to keep up, detective."

"You're not making your case towards trying to be put together well. And isn't she homeless? Why would she leave when she has nowhere else to turn?

"Yeah, I get it, she'll settle for whatever she can get."

"That's not-"

"This is the whiskey talking, Diane, not me. And I'm here right now because I don't know how to be put together. Christ."

His voice was attempting to be lowered, but it was still trailing out from the door from his lack of control of constraining it, and his temperament, one of which he had very little control over, was only serving to make his voice louder. The conflict in his voice ironically only led you further to him, and you would have recognized that tone anywhere; conflict, anger, impatience and insecurity and all; especially them, even. No matter what, you were slowly starting to recognize it as home.

When he lost himself, and, in kind, when you lost yourself, which was really your default state, it affected how you could feel one another. There was no easier way to lose one another or the richest parts of how to love the other other than to lose yourself; it was through accepting the constant beiwldred journey of feeling and knowing your own inner narrative that you could be truly alive and connect to his, and the same inverse was true from his end. Based off of the rapsy toned and edged voice that came from the other side of the door, you knew that he was doing it on purpose; aimlessness was comfortable for him. Preferred, even; even when it hurt you both. Especially then. The negative end was all he knew.

"Stay by me. We can try to figure out how to go inside without worrying about their reaction if we can help it." You whispered the words over your shoulder to the inquiring eyes of , his wide eyed wet eyes grazed with temportmental worry.

"It smells like a cheap knock off amatuer set in here. She actually settled for this? What has gotten into her?" 's eyes winced in inult as he turned his head over to the cracked open door that you had gripped your fingertips through, and you gave a breath as you shoke your head, but you turned your head as you gave him a warning look to keep his naturally high pitched voice low as you snapped your head over through the door.

You barely bothered mumbling a reply as you shouldered your way through the door. It began to open up fully as you made your way inside. You could feel your heart thumping in your chest, and the momentum was increasing; for someone that made you feel such a calm with the caretaking nature you wanted to give him- and he was someone who switched between intimidating and one of the most delicate, awkward and endearing timid innocence you had ever occurred anyway;he was complicated and unpredictable in that way-you had never felt more calm than attempting to go to him. You could feel the inherent depth that you craved to be by him; that any pain you had ever felt wanted to be by, in general. You fell more in love with every nuanced detail with every notice. Bojack was, if nothing else, certainly a slews of 'anyway' that made no coherent understanding in any regard to comprehensive stereotypes, and never should have; you adored the unpredictable mystery.

"Jesus!" Your eyes snapped forward as you a caught a flash of Bojack's body as he got his way up and stumbled through the erratic entanglement of the sheets as he knocked over the bottles, eyes lowered, black and sickly from under his eyes as he began to stumble his way forward, tripping through the bottles. His eyes wiended as he snapped his expression between the two of you as he stepped back, hands cramped in front of him with defnese; for someone that has such a heavy and naturally miserable look in their eyes with their cycnism, you had never seen someone so naturally inclined to tender panic. "When did you two get in here?"

It was the combination of light, dark, of the messiness and the intelligence, the stoic stability but the abrasive neediness and every which other contradiction that made him who he was, and you had learned to stop making sense of the idea of forever understanding and to simply accept the slung of one element of who he was and the one towards the next. He was exhilarating to you in that way; at one moment sarcastic and emotionally dry, worn down to the bone of his perception of what he noticed-he was one that noticed the wide scope of the world more than anyone should have- then tired and timid and drunk in his desire to be held like a boy, then witty and dignified, then intelligence, then fry eyed and senseless.

It all made up who he was, and whatever "it" was, you knew it was your personal form of blood rushing, of delicate heart thumping, but just as much was it the reason you felt sick with nervousness if his impulsivity had gotten the best of him, of his desire for self sabotage that was the main road he had taken that night for whatever wound he was carrying; he was a enigma in that way, carrying that which was inside of him and like a rotation of which was a different layer hidden and then brought to the forefront, hidden and then brought to the forefront, and then again, over and over.

" ." Diane's low, cynical and tired eyes gradually began to blink agaisnt their fog as she raised her body forward, pressing one pale hand beside her forehead as she began to raise her body upward. "Please tell me this is a bad trip."

"Diane-I cannot believe this." 's voice was hard, soft in that way that spoke of wanting to care for her, yet the anger in his voice was evident.

Your eyes were focused on the timid and shrunken form of Bojack as he stepped his way back fully, ears lowered and expression pouted as his eyes winced as he looked between the both of you entering, his hands cramped beside his chest as he looked over at you with that lovable and tender pout.

"Bojack? Are you alright?"

He had never looked more lost, tender or, in a sense, pathetic; the bottom of his eyelids snapped over to the bed as his ears lowered further, and his mouth griamnced as he looked between the two of you.

"Can't talk, bad timing." He tripped over his feet as he stumbled his way to the bed, kneeling his hand in front of the entaneeld sheets full of thrown and broken bottles as he shrugged his way inside with an abrupt breath. His eyes dimmed and empty as he turned and looked between the two of you. "For the record, I was doing everything I could to make sure that this didn't happen. So, you know-" He shrugged as he gave a gesture of his hand meant to be something of a cut off. "You know. Your fault."

"Bojack-"

"Said it the firs time-can't talk. Thank you!"

His head ducked under the sheets, eyes widned and ears perked franctially as he winced and snapped his body downward and under the sheets. Diane, who was curled against the floor with bottles sharded beside her and body curled in on herself, blinked sleepily as she turned her head upward and watched where bojack let out abrupt swears as he began to rustle himself under the sheets. Diane's black and straneld hair was plasetered across her pale and sickly skin as she blinked slowly, then settled for a dry roll of her eyes. There was some rustling under the sheets as you watched and heard Bojack's neurotic and durken attempt and keeping away from you.

"Goddmait-next time you take the entire body out with the liquor and just tell her to get a taxi! This is exactly what a ball of blubber would do!"

You could hear the breath that left his lips that wasn't unlike a conflicted sigh of defeat as you watched his ears press against the grey sheets, could see the molding of his chubby arms that you would recognize anywhere move as his form restesslly moved under it.

"Bojack, I'm here because I wanted to check on you. Is that ok?"

You thought he wouldn't reply, but that familiar annoyed and edged voice trailed its way through the sheets.

"No. There's just an alcoholic, large bumbling horse at every given party that you could ever attend. Congratulations, you found the party favor." His hand raised up while his palm entangled under the grey sheets. "Nothing going on here."

"Nothing going on? Yeah. Clearly!" empathized, rolling his eyes as he shouldered his way by your side. "Are you trying to get me worried sick by going out of your way to take my wife and put her in the worst scenario possible?"

"This was her decision too." There was a slight shouldering of his elbow, and a sound of that familiar deep voice that responded to the all too familiar feeling of his blunt and dry cynicism tha suggested he knew this would happen.. "Right, Diane?"

There was only a mumble that came from her end, disgruntled and clearly at a loss for response. 's eyes flashed, and the muscles on his face twitched with a clear progression of discontentment.

"Bojack, did you take her out to the back for her to drink?"

" , I'm fine." Diane's voice, tied and clearly drunk trailed through the sheet that was entangled with her through the bottles.

"Ah, so drunk Daine does speak. Good to know." Bojack's voice responded with that dry sarcasm, and you felt that ache of longing in your chest. It didn't make sense; there wasn't anything about him that particularly drew you to him on a technical level; he was a mess, and there was no reason to believe on the surface that he was any better than the crooked and cracked depth and maddening eyes of the men that had used you for momentarily pleasure and heat.

There was a no reason for drive of spiritual remarkability. And yet, every time you took him in in any detailed way, that odd sense of human and humble home and what he was overtook you, and a certain peace was found that was undeniably right. It was just right; it was clear-headed, peaceful, soft. Enclosed. He was pure. You felt it.

"Bojack, I promise it's alright. I'm here because I wanted to find you."

"Shit." Diane's empty eyes turned up to where there was the moving bundle under the sheets. "You hear that, Bojack? She wanted to find you."

"Noted."

You could see the way his black puffy eyes were starting to poke through the sheets, though you had hardly gotten the chance to se him properly yet. You caught glimpse of those wrinkled and saggy bags, the excess wrinkles carved onto his skin, the squint in his eyes that occurred after he was orgasimed or too drunk, and it was in those mundane details that you are reminded for what semed for the countless time what he did to you, and understanding was far from necessary; it simply came to you, whether you accepted it or not.

"Bojack, honey."

He made no acknowledgement towards the tenderness you threw out with his name. There was only another noise from his voice under the sheets that suggested his movements, and an disgruntled grunt that came from him as he continued to move under the sheets.

"Ow. Don't try to make the sheets even more messy than they already are." Diane's eyes turned to the bottle as she clanged her hand against it casually. When Bojack contuiend to entangle his movmenets under the sheets for what you couldn't even begin to guess for what motivation, her eyes lowered as she looked him over. "Bojack."

"I'm trying to see past the cloth, Diane! It's all dark."

"Diane, honey, what's beengoing on in there?" reached out a hand, fingers gripping against his palm nervously as he tired to walk his way to her; but his movements were kept from beeing the urgent need and drive he had that was lightning in his eyes as he made his way through the broken glass, though it hindered him rushing forward. "Let me in, sweetheart. You've been avoiding me all night."

"I'm fine, ." Diane's tone was blunt, tired, monotone as she kept her dim and exasperated eyes away from him. 's eyes winced as he turned his head and looked you over.

"That's the second time she's said that. Definitely a cause for me to start worrying."

"Yes, thank you." Your voice was more edged now, wincing as you turned your eyes forward while you tried to walk through the dim and foggy area, full of weed and ciggerete smoke and of other things beside, as you stepped over the glass while you walked your way forward. "I can tell that from the way she clearly got lost in the wrong territory tonight. You know, with the guy who brings on nothing but trouble."

"Whu-oh!" Bojack chuckled, in that way he did whenever he was put off, but he always responded to it with that ironic humor. You would recognize it anywhere. That same hide of humor kept present in his voice, that raspy toned defense in his tone that was hidden under that deep toned throat of humor that was both witty, emotionally intelligent, and tender and timid all at once. "You're welcome for the advice. Looks like you need it, if all it took for you to lose your wife was allowing her to get a little drunk. "

"Bojack Horseman!" 's eys winced as his tone eased up into a shar egede. "You have a lot of nerve tonight."

"Do I? I'm pretty sure this is just me being me."

"Don't make a big deal of it, . Please. I chose to come back here."

"You're not fine, Diane!" 's eyes widned, the wear his eyes extending his worry as he looked her over. "You don't even sound right. And clearly this room, this man that you keep deciding to go off with, is part of the problem!"

"What, can you tell by the distinct smell of the whiskey that practically has an association to me by default at this point?" Bojack's head was now fully over the sheets; or, at least, attempted to be. There was one side of the grey sheet that was lazily slewn across his snout as he winced and looked over. "Or the fifty thousand dozen other negative connotations you could make just from this smelly backwashed up room full of questionable interactions and compromises people made with oral and god knows whatever else occurs in these rooms?"

His limbs still splayed under the sheets, though one chubby hand was sneaking out and gripped on the layers of the sheet. He was clearly putting off looking at you, or even acknowledging you.

"Bojack, how are you feeling?" you tried. You felt unwanted, almost inappropriate in your presence; but that hardly mattered to you except for whatever he needed.

"Is that the woman I told I would go here in the back for? The one who keeps mysteriously showing up in my master bedroom every night?"

"Yes, she's the only reason I found you here. She's very good at finding trouble in obscure places." was gathering some confidence to navigate his way through the dark and the shattered glass of the room, his eyes profound with his desperation as he turned his eyes to Diane, who hasn't quite come to terms to looking at him yet.

"Is she? That must be how she found me in general to begin with."

You smiled in a small way, both with relief and a slight exhaust at the same time of how long it took to break through that wall.

"' 'She' just wants to know how you're feeling," you tried. Bojack's head, swaying to the left and right and with his head slung over lazily, turned over to you, though his eyelids were so heavy and lifeless that it seemed like it hardly counted towards the usual way he made you feel; you just felt a pity, or a challenge to try and help him out. "Your partner? It's an appropriate question to ask, given my position in your life."

"Is that what you call someone you're committed to? Or just some label you slap on so kids on twitter can make fun of you for using an outdated term?" He paused, torso shouldering under the sheets. He his hand onto the sheet beside his snout as he winced and gripped it off, just enough so that one eye was present, though the other kept closed with some disortnetion even without the sheet. "Yes. I'm fine. If that's the big question that you want to know tonight, then the answer is a blunt and overly famailiry yes. You're welcome."

There was an intense emptiness and disgruntlement in his eyes as he turned his expression forward and looked at you with a jab in his empty eyes. You paused as you looked into the aggressive emptiness of them. His cheeks were bloated more than usual-they were always rounded and adorable anyway, but there was a certain beauty to his troublement that only grew deeper the more you knew him, breathed with him, felt him; with the more time you spent and the more you came to know every layer that came along with falling deeper into a memory and lifestyle of 'somehow'. You wanted to live with him; to only think about him would never be enough. His black mane was sputtered in multiple directions, his eyebrows furrowed as he gazed at you with one eye squinted, one eye closed.

Something shifted in you at that moment, and for all that clamor or chaos and layered disgruntled talking between the four of you, something narrowed in as you took the detrimental of what he was asking for. He felt he deserved this, this complete lack of care for himself, and the conviction that no one and nothing would ever change his mind of the narrative that he wasn't worth precious discernment the way that Diane received-or anyone at all.

Knowing how you felt about him-about how your own life had led you to an evn worse version of he belief-you hardly knew what to do with the pained feeling of desiring to show him how determinantal it would be for you for reasons you couldn't understand to be bonded with him,- and for him, for his own reasons of the desire of being taken cared of in ways he had always needed and had never received.

You kneeled downward, wincing as you took in an intake of a breath as you tried to avoid the glass and the broken shards of the waste of the foggy muddled room when you were only a few inches awayf rom him, and Bojack's eyes turned towards you in a way that you knew he was only allowing because of a disgruntled and foggy eeyd indifferance, ears lowered as he gazed up at you with an increased look of look vulnerability of an attempt at independent msucilivity held back by tender timid helplessness of an artistic grace, rendered even more precious from how little it was seen or actually executed from just how cleary he wanted, needed, to be taken cared for.

He was clearly allowing himself to be molded from other people and from how easily twisted he had become within unfavorable circumstances of the chaos from the past that had displayed him as someone who was seen one toxic way when there was so much evidence, even now, how much remkrbaility there was in him under the constant negativity he harborded and believed in. It was leaving that heart unraveled and untouched, unseen, and how much more beautiful did it make you you feel for your own air to take it in-and his pains that he wouldn't let himself be that cherished partner that could be adored. There was a certain extra beauty in his suffering beyond the usual of hat you precieved, and the both of you had been wrought towards the rich reward of loving grace from one another through the roads ou had gotten through to get to one another.

"Hey," he said bluntly, dryily, with a clear attempted defense to not be emotionally vulnerable.

You leaned forward, fingers caressing through his hair with delicate fingers connected to your soft consideration that only existed when you took him in.

"Hi, sweetheart."

A change went over his expression; the nature tender good that he had was more evident as he looked away from your eyes, eyelids lwoered. He was good; so resoundly and beautifully, gracefully good. You would never be able to see him any other way now that you had come to see him the way you did. The petname had clearly awakened something in him.

You could have such a beautiful, cozy life with him, and how incredible it would be. A long life of everything you both endured to get to one another; and now you only wanted that soft endurance of simplistic rest from one another as winkes marked skin, days spent causal and laughing and knowing one another.

"What's going on in here?" you asked, eyes indicating towards the sheets.

He shrugged, chubby brawny shoulders somewhat visible under the moving sheets.

"Having some private bender away from the other losers having their own private benders. Though it wasn't planned, admittedly. Us drunks have a great talent for just figuring things out like this by nature."

"Diane, you are not a drunk. Don't let him drag you down like that!" voice pipped up as his high pitched voice interjected. There was gluten of something not unlike defeat in Bojack's eyes, but he masked it with an eyeroll, Your hands found his shoulder, and you felt goosebumps at how much you had missed his intimate and loveable warm skin against yours, the flesh feel only adding to the satisfaction.

"Oh, god. Here we go. Let's here 's lecture on what's right or not." Bojack's exasperation and the lazy tilt of his head turned forward, arm slung beside the curve of his stomach,

"Baby, he's right." You kneeled down further so that you were non-intimidating and eye level, and Boajck's eyes fluttered in something that wasn't completely unlike surprise to you as he turned to you. "You shouldn't put that label on you."

"Do you think I want to? Hey, here's a headline for tonight: Bojack says a little thing called the truth."

"Diane, you're better than this. Let's go," urged.

"Those are true things," Bojack stated, dry and dredded eyes turning up to him. "But she's also better at being told what to do."

"Thank you, Bojack," Diane said as she started to shoulder her way out of the sheets. Bojack watched her, eyes trailing with avoidance towards you and clear disgruntlement as she started to work on getting her way out of the sheet. He still avoided looking at you even as Daine found her balance and readjusted while she gave a swear to keep her balance.

"Anytime."

Your hesd turned over your shoulder to follow Bojack's empty eyes. Her black hair was sticking in multiple directions as she started to ease her way out, black bags under her skin as she pressed one palm to her pale arm. Bojack started to ease himself back inside of the sheets, eyes clearly heavy with that exhaustion that seemed like it was catered to your specific digression to break your heart, exhausted and timid and vulnerable, expression squinted in his drunken exhaustion and that complex nuance you could have gotten lost in at any given point.

His hands grazed against the sheets as he wrapped them around his palm fully, eyes refusing to meet yours with some determined flair to not look too deeply into any given vulnerability he could give you-or perhaps he just didn't care.

"Diane! Sweetheart, what did you get into?" Your head turned over again as you looked over to where 's hand reached out and grasped beside Diane's arm, looking over at the cuts and scratches against her arm as his expression turned over her. A flair came over his eyes as he looked her stumbling form over. "What is wrong with you?"

Diane let out a murmur, some incoherent words leaving her lips, and then a simple coherent word of; "Bojack."

's eyes flashed. "Yes, obviously Bojack got you into some trouble." He shot his eyes over to Bojack, who's snout was now only halfway visible from the sheets again, ears lowered, grey sheet thrown over his snout as he looked over at him with a wince.

"Yes, obviously Bojack did," Bojack said dryly. Emotional exhaustion, the suggested extent of him used to being disappointing to people, grazed his tone.

"Well, get out. You can't help yourself or her out of trouble if you keep yourself in there. Diane, come on."

"Can't I? I don't know, , I've been doing this for years. I'm pretty well versed on it."

"I'll get him." Diane's black foggy eyes were laden with a tinted exhaustion as she turned herself to the sheets, kneeling downward, giving low and exhausted moans and a swear as she manaeged to stumble her way over through the broken glass, arm slipping out by some miracle from being gripped by 's hand as she stumbled her way forward. She reached out a hand, snaking it under the sheets, even as Bojack actively swept his body away from her, hands gripped across the sheets as he winced and looked her over. "C'mon, buddy. Party's over."

"Ew. No."

She raised her thin brow with dry challenge. "You don't want to scare of your five day girlfriend, do you?'

"The party is actually over when I say it is, Diane. And I'm pretty sure I have some good adventures under this sheet yet. Disappointment or not."

She hit his elbow with exasperation. Bojack let out a hissed "Ow!" as he sunk further into the sheets

'C'mon-" She rolled her eyes as she reached out both hands, Bojack's torso starting to become buried under the sheets. He was timid, adorable; tender; bumbly, plush. You vaguely saw the way Bojack's movements were trembling under the blankets as he slung from her touch-or attempted to.

"Stop elbowing me, Bojack."

"I'm too drunk to see in front of me, Diane!" His voice was almost wining. "Do you think that's something I can control?"

Diane's tired and dry eyes turned to you. "You wanna shot at it?"

"Don't," Bojack spoke through the sheets. "I'm fine. I came here for a reason."

You smiled softly, exhausted, as you inched your way towards the conflicted bundle. You kneeled forward, already feeling your heart quicken at the sheets of the bumbling form in front of you, the whiskey smell that emitted from the sheets, the familiar strange warmth of a specific tang that came solely from him. You reached one hand as you started to lift the sheet up from the head that was turned into himself, hearing his timid and adorable breah, and half of you wondered if this pathetic, lovable and scared man was the most honest version of him.

"Whatever. I've done enough."

Diane scooted away, and you started to reach your head under the fabric until it was a few inches under the blanket. Those white, wide, fascinating and tormented eyes met yours, complemented by the lowering of his ears and the suggested brawny skin, though it was camolflounged by the majority of the dark under the sheets, rendering his eyebags almost completely unnoticeable, though you could still make out the compelling surreleamnet of his blakc hair, the deliciate tender allure of his lowered ears and how it complimented that sculpted face.

You rested your chin on your wrists. "Hey."

Bojack's eyes lowered in something that could have been seen as defense, insecurity, or any other given narrative of what made up those layered messages. "Came all the way over to check on someone who's incredibly drunk, huh?"

"No. I came all this way to see you. A very distinct difference."

"Is it?"

You were about to reply, but not before threw his hand up against the sheets and pulled it back, causing the both of you to be vulnerable as the claden hidden shelter of it was thrown away. Bojack's eyes widened as he threw his hands over his ears, panic possessing his eyes, and there he was, in all of his drunken and wrinkle carven, timid glory, and you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that you were in love.

"Godammit, ! You'll do anything to make sure you can turn any rescue situation into one of unwanted precedence over the act of hiding from reality in the most insufferable way as quickly as possible!"

"You can't keep hiding. I came to rescue my wife, mainly, but also the man who took her from me. What kind of rescue situation would it be if I left my wife's friend, who is also mine, might I remind you, alone and hidden after everything I did to find her?"

"Yes, the average dickhole who 'stole' your wife. His rescue being your main concern absolutely makes sense."

Despite the blunt and what sounded like emotional inept crazed anger in his voice, there was that usual sense of unintentional dignified posie in his tone that always came naturally. He was more than what he believed, and more than what he seemed, even when he didn't mean to.

Boajck started to lift himself off the sheets, seeming to take the act of having the sheet thrown over as an excuse to turn away from the brief intimacy you had shared. Bojack threw his head backward while his eyes squinted as he got himself up, fleshy wrist resting on his dirty stained blue jeans. You followed suit with collecting yourself physically, albeit hesitantly.

abruptly threw his hand against the pillow that had been resting in between the spaces of the bodies of Diane and Bojack, tossing it to the corner. Bojack, with one ear lowered and the other raised and his eyes squinted with clear disgruntlement, watched as he collected himself in his lack of concern for himself while his eyes turned to watch the messy array of 's wife beside him as 's hand kept gripped on her arm.

Diane's hair stuck out in a mutituite of directions, makeup smeared across the side of her face, but most noticeably of all, the foggy conflicting detachment in her eyes that was executed further by the foggy rose colored burning on the side of her eyes, and the scratches and sore holes on her arm that suggested drug use. She looked the mirror of the mess that Boajck was in, but you hardly noticed her; you never really could when the enticement of the messy blackened mess of conflict of a tender twisted foley of a man was around; your own personal enticement of broen with a depth beyond what you could understand.

Diane's pale cheeks were hardly untouched for long; they were met by neon furry hand that grazed against her cheek with a tender consideration that made Bojack's eyes harden, and your compelling desire to how much you wanted to give that tenderness tenfold to him; but for the time being were your actions paralyzed with the overprocessing of how much of mess he was; a quick he had allowed himself to be this low.

"Great. Now that we've gotten that controversy out of the way-" 's voice was pointed with an attitude a sa jab, and Bojack rolled up his eyes as he gave a shake of his head. cupped Diane's face as he turned to her.

"My dandelion! Are you okay, sweetheart?" He lifted up his hands further onto her skin until her cheek was lifted up from the pressure of his hand. A set of neon fingertips delicately pressed on the sweaty side of the hair falling into Daine's face, who blinked at him with her clear disgruntlement. She reached out a hand, blinking in her messy air as she pulled his hand away.

"Never better," she said dryily.

"Yeah, that's why she must be so perfectly maladjusted with black bags under her eyes and her uneven voice," Bojack teasing, eyes squinted in his jaded teasing; almost aggression this time around. "What other way is there to be better? You're lucky its not worse."

You felt yourself pondering the question the past week concerning him more often than not; and the answer was always the same one that left you aching for the idea of loving him, an act that undone left you particularly paralized with desire; the idea that he was separate from the tender consideration that was being shown to Diane in that moment, that he could never be the cherished lover; a belief he clearly deeply carried.

He had been drenched in too many narratives that he was the exception; part of the superficial, the trashy, the unloved, whether from bad disparagement that he threw out to others of acts that made him feel as if he deserved it and always bad, or the filings of loathing others had thrown at him. Even as you were seeing one another, it was clear he wasn't expecting it from you; and even less that he would accept it.

's eyes widened as he looked Diane over, and his eyes lowered into a sudden dim worry as his hands cupped her cheeks, her eyes dry, detached, and sullen.

"You're right. She looks terrible!"

"Thank you," Diane said flatly. Her eyes, lowered into something only halfway present, was only becoming more messy and dry, barely present, as she rubbed her palm against the side of her skin in an attempt to clean it, though it only caused to make her look more ghoulish and pale. "Yeah, my first answer of obviously being just fine was clearly a joke. That's why I have makeup all over my face. Complemented by hair stuck in my mouth."

"Diane. You know I always support our unconventional ways of showing how fine you are."

"Yeah-well-" Diane's hand grazed beside his yellow hands, cheek leaned forward as she allowed her cheek to sullenly ease across his palms. "You're welcome for the signs that led you to the end of this scavenger hunt."

"Eyyohh!" Bojack gave a loud playful hitch of the statement. "Wonder where she got that wit from. It definitely wasn't you, ."

Diane's eyes turned to her husband. "Ignore him."

Bojack's ears flew down further, and the dryness increased."Yeah that's right, ignore me. Keep at it. See if it matters."

pulled Diane's face further to his, his hands squishing her cheeks.

"My sweet darling, I'm going to get you out of here right now and I'm going to clean you up. There's absolutely no way in heaven then I'm going to let my wife be in a state like this. Not if I can help it! What a terror."

Boajck's eyes squinted further and he swayed to the left and right while he looked between the both of them, and a newfound jaded exhaustion seemed to overcome his features, as if the presence of tenderness in the abstinence of his own was throttling himself further into whatever dark mode had caused him to act out the way he had to begin with.

"Sweetheart."

You said the pet name, spoken often enough in regards to him but not nearly enough for your liking and certintly with not depth as ahesitant welcome to come into you if that was what he wanted. Pet names towards him felt like they left your lips with a certain sense of urgency, romantic but come too late for your liking. Softly, gently, with the idea of enticing entrance for him to respond.

"What?"

It was almost spoken as a snort from how congested he was. He squinted, eyes blackened and hardly present as his conflicted gaze, one which was clearly experiencing bad and accepting of what he felt he deserved, twisted to you.

"I want to clean you up. Make sure you're alright."

A sarcastic and dry laugh left his lips as his eyes met yours, vaguely cocky in a glint of his eyes as he looked over with you with a dry sarcasm.

"What're you so worried about? Never seen a drunk horse getting off his rocker for a night?"

You paused, gazing back and forth between his eyes.

"Are you ok?"

"Me? I"m golden. Never better. I get sick and drunk on a good day. This is actually pretty easy. This night going any other way would have been-" He snapped his eyes to the side, then gave a shrug. "Weird."

You wanted to say more; when the chaos of your own individualistic self doubt and the never ending speeding noise of the world and all its unwelcome truths fell away and you merely focused on him, you found there was a peaceful rhythm that was irreplaceable, like a rhythm of mediation.

But this wasn't about your comfort; it never really was; that was just something that came to you naturally through the intake of himself as he was naturally. Bojack clearly wasn't interested in hearing it; his reasons for not wanting to do were far more complicated.

"If there was something I could do fo-"

You trailed off as Bojack turned his eyes away, his eyes dry with detachment, and suddenly you didn't feel nearly confident enough to continue. There was something in the emotion that wasn't embarrassment; there was too much worthwhile payoff for loving him for that, but rather a deep understanding that there was a wall that needed to be climbed.

He seemed determined to be unresponsive as he kept his eyes on the complicated intimacy of Diane and . There was a bittersweetness there in his eyes; there always was, but especially as it came to be now-and besides, the more you loved him, the more you noticed details that previously would have escaped you. There was a certain extra dark black underneath his heavy eyes that were black and laden with wrinkles that seemed to be permanently increased into his skin. His eyes looked back and forth between the considered murmuring of lovers between and Daine, now lowly spoken enough that it was an intimacy only meant for the two of them.

Boajck's head swayed as his black eyes squinted, almond eyes switching between the both of them, and almost boyish pout in his eyes. You allowed him that bitterness; a jaded heart like his needed time to take in that of which was in front of him and to process whatever it was that chipped away at what was already troubled. You turned your head down to your fingertips, playing with your hands, and tried to recenter yourself into acceptance.

Finally, after a simple action from -the intimacy of his lips pressing against her cheek with a soft chuckle from Diane's end and a graze of his lips, her expression lowered into something that was succumbed by a tender defeat of contentment of acceptance did Boajack's eyes roll upward, so quickly that it was more of a twitch than it was an expression of processing of emotion rather than sarcasm; he was incessantly fast and quick processing in that way, and you admired him for it. But the pain was still resoundly present.

"Ever heard of the term, 'getting a room'?" Though there was a complication of emotion on Bojack's features, it quickly turned to the usual sense of his jaded complacency and disgust, the simplicity of it providing him comfort. "They came out with it before you were born or before your coping mechanism strategies were invented with chasing sticks. Might want to think about following it."

's ears raised up, and a laugh escaped his lips that was gentle in a passive aggressive way only half a second after he did it, a quick attempt at his usual rushed and almost desperately sought joy. God forbid if he was angry for more than a few moments in acts of already questionable conflict. "Good one! And you know what, you're right! We do need our own room in order for me to nurse you back to health, sweetheart!"

"As long as I get a washcloth on my head to help me with this headache." Diane's eyes closed as she eased her hand across her forehead, the drab of her messy makeup and the wear of her face splattered across with her black air as she swayed.

"Yeah. Why don't you go somewhere to take care of your wife instead of playing this back and forth of being totally oblivious?" Bojack's eyes began aggressive and dry again, head tilting forward in insistence.

This time, was more visibly affected, turning his head over to Bojack as he gave him an abrupt galre. "Ever heard the term of coming up with something that isn't some generic copy cut out insult?"

Bojack raised his body upward, shooting himself forward, clearing feeding into his fire for the sake of his own protection.

"Yeah, I have, but I'm drunk off my ass and you can't expect me to think of something mid sentence!"

"I'll give you that ,because you are, as you stated, very, very drunk."

"Uh-huh. And so is your wife." Your hand reached out and pressed across Bojck's chest as you began to ease him back down into a slouched forward positon, his ears lowered and his eyes winced as he eased himself back behind the bed. You spoke his name lowly to try and keep him calm, as if you had successfully fooled yourself into thinking you could have that kind of affect on him. "Maybe it's time to start treating her like one, huh?"

's eyes turned to Diane as he kept his hands pressed on her cheek. Her drunken and barely eyes raised upward, and she managed a slow curve raise of her lip, lowered and heavy eyelids turned upward as her eyes gleamed while she turned her head up and met his eyes. 's face melted as he met his wife's disgruntled expression, threading his fingertips beside her cheeks, and she closed the pale of her eyes while managed a soft hum.

"He is right. As are you, dandelion. And he is right again- I do need to get you to a place much, much nicer than this, and very quickly."

delicately puts his hands around the side of the end of her hands while he raised her up full into a position where she was leaning beside his body, mumbling under her lip as she raised her hand by his chest and stumbled beside him. She only managed a few low disassicoated hums as her swaying body leaned by him, her eyes trailing closed as she stumbled against her husband's jutted chest, stumbling forward, then backward, as kept his hands behind her back for help of balance. He grabbed her hand as her slumpen body started to lean against the side of his body after ever failed sway, head craning as it turned and pressed against his neck finally with a dull grunt as the muscles on her face furrowed, then was content, as she was pulled into his embrace. A small smile, and gentle contentment, eased on 's face as she watched her gently.

"There, there, sweetheart. Nice and easy. I'll take you somewhere to sit, and the whole night will pass by like it never happened. Or did happen, but in a good, easy way."

"Like a half filmed episode only half done in person, with the other done on greenscreen?" Her words slurred, a drunken smile in her voice.
Peanutbutter chuckled. "So you are catching up on my comparisons and phrases! Yes, exactly that."

They both started to tumble out of the door, Diane's head thrown under her shoulders as she tripped next to . He opened the door, the reflects of the neon lights outside, the purple of the neon lights and the meld of the red starting to ease through the crack open of the door with the blaring music easing inside as it melded into the trahsiness of the small room.

Outside was the sounds of the party starting to become demeaningly evident again, the sounds of the sweating bodies and the loud noises trailing through the air of the purple tinted room, right along with the rest of the loud white noises that were emitting from it that spoke of superficial nights and only half executed loves, if there had ever been any there to begin with.

Boajck's eyes turned to you, and you fluttered your own to meet his; for just how clumsy and timid he could be, there was an odd intimation to him, if only for how emotionally dried, cuttingly intelligent, and past any kind of bullshti he could be when in certain moods.

"No point in sitting here. Unless you want to take in the stink of the sheets."

He grunted as he got himself up, only to instantly stumble to the left side as he half tripped over the layer of the sheets. "Wuh-oh. Looks like I still got a trippy drunk trip. You know what washes down a rich drunk episode?"

He swung around messily, uncaringly, eyes puffy and darted in multiple directions as he waved his hands in an equally awkward lack of caring drunken way. When he failed to immediately find the bottles he was looking for, he settled for turning as he looked to you, titing his head forward as he gave an abrupt raspy grunt.

"Getting more drunk. All you have to do then is black out, and when you wake up-" He raised up his hands, teeth flashed together as his arms raised upward. "Magically sober again! To get drunk ever more! Yay!"

"Not sure that's how that works, really." You laughed, gently, taken by how his adorable and erratic nature could somehow compliment so well with that boyish naive helplessness he carried, whether he knew it or not, and you were taken by just how much you wanted to memorize him; the intelligence of his naturally emotionally rich and compelling voice, the gentleness of his eyes, the humble human ucneirrnity of how he carried himself. For now, you were only relieved that he was even showing signs of being a little more alight at all.

You started working on getting yourself up from the ground, wincing as you felt the pieces of glass vaguely cutting beside your palm despite your best efforts to raise yourself up successfully without being cut. Bojack squinted drunkenly, playfully, as he placed a hand on his hip.

"Of course it is. Isn't that the best deal?"

He waved his hand in a gesture meant to be passive, though it mostly only achieved at executing his horribly drunk and hardly focused demeanor. Your eyes dimmed as you looked him over while your body was kept kneeled by the edge of the bed, expression turning as you searched him and looked him over. Your hands settled beside the edge of the bed, grazing between the sheets as you smoothed them forward as much as you could without directly touching his thighs.

"Are you ok?"

Bojack gave an abrupt low rasp, something between a rapsy burp and a drunken messy rasp. "Ask again in five minutes and the answer will be the same as the last five minutes."

"I just meat-"

"I'm sorry. That was-rude." He placed his fingertips on his snout, closing his eyes as the muscles on his face tensed. "I'm so out of it I forgot you were my-uh-" He waved his hand in a circle. "What's the word I"m looking for. Not girlfriend, necessarily." His eyes opened as he turned his head to the side, eyes sudden and the skin of his expression around them more puffy than ever. "No woman has made sense with that title for years."

You paused as you took a breath, turning your eyes down and focusing on your hands.

"I"m sorry. Did that-hurt your feelings?" Bojack winced as he looked you over, plump stotach curving as he slouched by the white sim wall with a hand by the curve of his stomtahc. "We're on the same page, right?"

"Even if it did, I've felt far worse, and by this time in my life I've come to learn that any headspace, anything that happens, in general, will eventually turn and fade into something that isn't especially prominent in your mind or headspace anyway. So-it doesn't matter. That's one of the freeing things about living a life where there was never anything to lose, and from where you've lost and have been in terrible headspaces enough to get to the point where you no longer let those kind of things affect you long term."

Bojack's eyes turned down, ears lowered as a genuinely somber expression entered his eyes as he looked down.

"I'm sorry. I just-" He breathed, gave a small shrug of his shoulders. "This has been a lot for me."

"I don't care about that." You allowed yourself to gradually climb onto the edge of the bed, your hips eased yourself beside Bojack, and his eyes turned up as he looked you over, eyes turning up in question with ears lowered as his eyes looked you over. "How are you?"

"Me?" Bojack's eyes widened, and then he abruptly chuckled, as casually as he could, eyes wincing and bashful look easing across his expression. "I'm fine! Totally! Never better." He wobbled forward as he spoke, letting out a shaky laugh. As much as his bloated and drunk body would allow him to, he began to rasie himself upward from where he slouched, easing his unfocused body forward as much as he was able, though he barley managed to reach over the plush curve of his stomach. "There's something up your ass to keep asking me."

"Bojack, don't."

You spoke it with some odd protective, almost animalistic instinct to precent him fron taking the superficial and easy route. To dress him in softness was second nature to you. He turned as he gazed at you through his foggy eyes as he pasted in the swaying off his body, half sat upward in the attempt of getting off the bed, only to abruptly turn down again as he gave an abrupt grunt and placed a hand on his snout, squinting in something that was somehow both playful and sick at the same time. You tried to ease yourself forward to place on his hand to help him, but he abutply snapped his hand in front of you, snapping himself away from your attempt as he waved his hand into an abrupt blunt gesture. Your hands fell back by your chest.

"Don't what? Tell the truth? You're not one of those profoundly superficial half contrived idiots who are only half thinking cowards of the industry who can't tell left from, right? Please tell me you're not."

"I'm homeless, Bojack. I'm not anything."

"Because that would be horribly detrimental. For me. As someone who has already slept with far too many people like that. Worked with too many. I couldn't be one of those haoy people successful with their careers, of course not."

He grunted, letting out another moan as he leane dhis hands behind his body and tried to raise himself up while his hands lifted him from behind the wall, and barely caught himself through a swinging of his arms while his weight abruptly fell back down again, and his head flew back. Your hands raised in front of him again intrinsically to attempt to help him, even as they froze halfway, useless as ever.

"This person this, this person that-how about Bojack is not liking it." He jabbed a finger at himself. "And he knows this guy better than anyone."

"Please." Your fingers pressed on your palm, if only to bring the awkward tension through your body somewhere. "I'm trying to take care of you."

Bojack chuckled, though it wasn't in a way that was malicious'; his eyes were too foggy and detached for that as a detached blurred fog came over his expression, and it was clear that he was only less than half away of what the conversationw as even concerning.

Your emotional conflicts reached its peak, though it wasn't towards him; nothing negative evry really was when it came to him. Though you had only known him for a week and a few hours, by now every person that had come and go through lighting speed in your life had always had a black blot of disrepect towards every way they felt about you, and they didn't hesitant to make it resoundly clear how they did. You hadn't been treated with respect, or even human, by any man that had come by your path that saw you as a convicent commeidtry towards their boredom and grimy desperation in decades, and any memory before that was so blurred, irrelevant, that it hardly mattered.

Everything executed towards him was always clad in some rich protection of something resoundly good, soft , pure. He was healing to you thta way, and everything else seemed fake, thin, foolish compared to what he was and what he meant fro you.

But, as also always with him, it come out more so as an odd quietment of tenderness that was laced in gentle humor to cover up his own heavy complcaiton underneath that softness of which you gaiend from being near bim, and you were still bewildered from your own end of what you were doing for him in kind, if antyhing.

"We can tease and talk as much as you'd lile. But I want to take you out of this room-it's full of hald used injections and drugs, and take you out and get you into a clearer headspace. Can we try that?"

Your felt your words shake as they left your lips, your temperament of affection reaching its full climax along with your insecurity that came from a multitude of things that could go wrong. Bojack only gave another low grunt, waved his hands beside you, then had his dry eyes open as he began to ease himself forward again, only to give a sickening grunt, his body bellowing back onto the wall again as he gave a rasped grunt and snapped his head behind the wall. You rushd to him, gripping his am, one side of his tuxedo falling off his shoulder as he swayed, mouth open messily in a drunken careless grin.

"That did not work. No one ever tells you how hard it is to get yourself up when you've fogged up your head this much." He managed to snap his head forward, giving you an especially adorable winced as he reached forward and placed his hand on his snout, wincing as he looked you over, both boyish and sickly.

"Looks like too much distraction vodka down my old system. I need some coming down party gin to wash it down to really black me out. I'm in the middle part of my drunk cope of going out to places like this where I'm just aware enough to be considered functional-not quite enough on the blacking out part."

"Why did you want to come, then?"

"Jesus, lady. I don't know. I guess I just wanted to get out of those sad, empty for walls protruding isolation for a little while if i could. Isn't that reasonable?"

His eyes protueded to show off his ture loathing as he spoke, eyes turning in front of hm in an detschement dusguntled disgust towards what he felt anything that was home represented.

You allowed his statement to have something somewhat soothing to it as you only gave him a hum of of agreement, though the sentiment of it was only for him to fel comfortable in how he spoke; a statement that was clearly from the edge of someone aware of his disparagement of intentional acts against himself, though it was sweet and softly clad in that certain softness that only occurred when someone was in the presence of someone they irreparably loved to the extent where every detail of your expression met his perception of his existence.

Your hand caressed through the black of his hair, fingers melding through the thick coarse strands, gray a the roots despite the black raven dye. It was all precious, and painful, and yet it was that rich emotion that amade you know that whatever it was that a human wired like you was needed, it was fulfilled through whatever it was that had made him as he was.

He was jaded and determined to be as superficial as what people said about him, to match the expectations of what he was told and who he was told he would always be. It was less painful for him that way-to match what he was told he was rather than to believe any other possibility; it was less painful to not feel tenderness or any open endedness about how he could be inside himself than to believe it was never there for him at all. Less pain for him, and it had never had any side affects; but now more pain for you.

"You sweet, lost thing." Your eyes turned him over gently. "Look at you."

"Sweet, lost thing?" Bojack gave you a raise of his eyes as he looked you over. "There's the little melding jackpot of your romantic claden stirrup iron ivory meeting my stubborn cynicism." His black puffy eyes turned to you as he looked you over, and he seemed to take in your lack of knowing of what to say next to respond. "What, did you think I was going to have some transforming response this time?"

You shook your head gently.

"There's no right here. I'm only telling you this because I want to take care of you. There's no ulterior motive. Let yourself believe it."

"Uh-huh. I've drowned a lot of the same conversations in gin. They sound pretty, but useless. If you know the first thing about relationships. Or where people think they're coming from with that they're saying. Not worth taking seriously."

He lifted his eyes towards the club, the door now fully open where and Diane had been a moment before."Where's the waiter?"

You could read him, whether he liked it or not. Bojack's air was intentionally disconnected and as far away from you as he could manage. It was a physical effort; he enjoyed, in a sense, being away from you, for whatever twisted comfort of familiarity it gave him. Discomfort for him was familiarity. Pain was famarilty; and above all else, what was achieved and wanted more than anything, including the need for change towards a happier life, was famailrity.

He was a clear attempt far from receiving the caring nourishment of what you wanted to give him. He squirmed as he saw the dynamic of Diane being carried by with his arm pressed around her waist, hands traced under her chin, muscles sodden with concern as he sat her on one of the benches and talked to her in soft nothings that was only for them between the open door.

Bojack's eyes squinted further and his ears lowered, and you knew you could never be so endeared, in a devastating capacity, to allow himself what he was so clearly affected by with Diane and now. Whatever it was that he was taking in now between the tnederment was giving Diane, it was something hat was affecting himself deeply. The part of you that felt you saw him believed that he was intentionally keeping himself away from you treating him just as preciously, which you knew he never was; not just for his reckless and superficial reputation so different from those soulful tired eyes, but also because as a man, he had always expecedto be the caretaker rather than the one being cared for, even though his life experience far since robbed him of being able to execute that successfully.

"There's no rules for someone being treated like that. Loved like that." You said the words only as a soft inviation of what you thought you could see in Bojack's eyes as he looked over the way was talking to her so tenderly, his tone giving away in and of itself what it meant to be soft with someone human, connected, desering of their emotional needs; exisiting.

"That has not ben my experience. And even if it was-I've met plenty of woman I could never treat that way even if I tried. They were too aware of who I was. The way they saw me."

Your eyes turned down, your hands eased across the sheets as you swept your hands across the grey sheets.

"I wasn't talking about the woman you loved."

Bojack looked at everything with eyes that made everything seem not attractive, or alluring, but it was in the very context of the fact it wasn't for him, with the way that everything was a black hole that i was executed by his specific existence and his narrow judgeemnt of the world through his terrible and narrow loveless expereicnes, that made it the most tender feeling of longing endearment of care you had ever cinviened in the world towards him.

"Have you ever been in love with a human?"

Bojack's ears perked up from where they were lying back, and his eyes widned as he turned and looked you over. You gave him a small raise of you lip.

"Uh-" His eyes turned up in bewildered thought. "I mean, I don't know. I've dated plenty of woman."

"But did you love them? Did you feel loved by them, in your own specified way."

Bojack didn't reply. With the way he was swaying and with that heavily lidded, detached and sickly heavy expression as he looked over and watched 's movements and Diane's body that was gradually melting into thim, he seemed to only become more enticed by whatever secret portray he was taking in.

"Look at them. He's acting like her own personal nanny. As if he'll be able to undo the last sixty minutes with old Bojack, alcohol and this shitty company she calls friends and turn it into some reverrble phsyhyclofal and physical state that'll leave her better off for it. As if such a thing is possible. As if I didn't try it." He leaned forward, thrashing his arms. "Get a room, asshole!"

Peanutbbutter lifted up his ears only for a moment in the middle of how he was endearing Diane, only vaguely hearing Bojack's bitter call through the sound of the party, and then rolled his shoulders causally as he turned the clear tender mood between himself and his wife back in full.

"Blunt and bitter statement-you're worse off for it, BJ." Bojack mumbled under his breath, and it seemed for the moment that he was too caught up in his loathing to entirely perceive that you were even there. "What are blunt and bitter statements except for the precocieved notion of something that is true that usually dressed in some denial by the vast majority until someone who's clever enough to undertake nad unravel it for what it is says it out loud?" He lifted up a finger, pointing to the ceiling needlessly as he he looked to you, raising his brow at you with an almost cocky jab. "Tones of perceptions of denial dressed in civilized form, also known as the common rod of denial."

He shot a glare over to , who's coos, right along with the pushing and slight fight of Diane's appreciation but jaded and distant exasperation, were trailing and breaking even through the noise of the club. "And the gestures, as if being exaggerated, will prove his point further of how he'll do for precious Diane, who totally can't just put herself together on her own better. What an idiot."

"You-"

"Yes, I can read your suggested look of tyranny of secluded judgment that expects me to self reflect and, yes, I know I make gestures of emotion,too, but only because-and I want to make this firmly, clear- I am drunk. And that doesn't excuse the way he talks to her. As if she's not a grown woman who can't take care of herself. It's not romantic, its contrived and accepted infantilization. And people call that marriage."

Your hands hesitantly pressed against the side of his shoulder, but he stumbled away an inch to the left-whether or not it was intentional, you didn't know, but you didn't keep going forth with it, though it seemed as if it was more of a challenge to not; there had never been such paralyzation in action that seemed as constrained and punishable as not acting on enwrapping his clear chaos and giving it any formable form of grounding.

"Don't worry about him. Or her. Or anyone."

"Don't worry about them?"

A laugh of pressure escaped, as if he had been punched. "I wouldn't be a conflicted baby like that. No. I'm not worried about them. Because I don't copy people's intentions. Especially when I know it's based on emotion, which always-and I mean always-" He snapped his fingers upwards as he looked at you pointedly. "-Ends well. Not intentionally, anyway."

Your eyes looked over the details of his form; the disarray of his hair, the bags under his eyes, the conflict in his expression; the fragile lowered disarray of his ears, and you knew there was a swaying to his air that would, all things considered, throw you if you were to do anything less than to hold him. It was a physical pain; there was a heavy strained ache to loving someone too deeply, especially when they were in constant danger; and Bojack didn't even seem to be aware of how detrimental that danger was to himself, how he kept himself from anything good or hole.

"Let me hold you." You swallowed, strained. "At least until you can stand."

Bojack let out a breath that was somewhere between a sigh and a sound amassed by another pained breath from his lack of caring for himself.

"Is that going to make this answer easier for you, at all?" His eyes turned as he met your eyes. "I mean-" He darted up his hand as he gave a shrug. "Being with me. Is that something that would help?"

"Anything that would make this easier for the both of us. Anything. I promise."

He was undressed in himself in his wrecked vulnerability, eyes darkened and bags puffy, hair sticking out, as if the very threads of whatever complicated disharmony that was barely holding his misshapen masses was threading through the seams of what wove him and was unraveling him from the inside out. The only thing you knew amidst interpersonal uncertainty in the wake and response to his own was that you had never had you been more in love or enchanted by what was meant to be met with disgust by conventional standards. The best things in life followed the most unconventional rules that went against the expectations brought on by those and executed by those who understood nothing and had no perception of how odd life really was-most especially love.

And, in the case of the way he made you feel in particular; the most odd and against logic of all, it was the most strange, incomprehensible and affecting wreck of that which didn't need sense of even focus; only understood.

His body was slumped backward, stomach bloated with the amount of alcohol he had consumed, and the most delicate part that drove you mad with longing for reasons you didn't need to understand, only to even feel; his molded chubby hand presse on the hill of his stomach. You felt you could love ever same detail of him for a lifetime and it would never grow mundane.

Countless stains from whisky and other forms of messy consumption that rested on his shirt and sweater, bags black and more wrinkles under his eyes that gave him a look of sickness that was becoming deeper in the general disposition of his hair. His ears were lowered backward, and there was a hardened exasperation in his lines and in that spark of life and sharpness in his eyes that never went away no matter what dullness came on it. Your mind and heart could have gone on in its observation, and then even beyond.

"Then-" He waed his hand beside him dismissively, though there a defense in his eyes that he was trying to keep from opening up fully as much as he was able. "Have at it, then. Sure."

You fel surprise flash through you, but you gave a nod, breathing shakily, then begant o ease your body forward towards Bojack. Your head turned up to his expression until your body leaned forward, and with a hesitant delicacy did your wrap your arms around the bloated curve of his body, eyes closed, and then with a soft breath did you lean your cheek by his sweater.

"It's funny. I feel like, as painful as it is to navigate life entirely alone, I never would have discovered the truest version of me, or what I'm disveoring with you now, had I now has all the sioaltion in the world and had been forced to find myself."

There was a pause, and you turned your head up to graze your expression aross Bojack; but his eyes were profound, but unreadable. He gave you a soft grunt; something oddly graceful, all things considered, as he heard your words. But for the time being, his ability to truly want or feel your words were closed.

"Look at those goobs. Lookin' at one another like what they're doing anything that means anything. As if she won't be vomiting by the end of the night, and he'll have to clean up the mess." Another loud, spiteful cackle, his head thrown back. "God, I would pay big money to see that. That would end me."

It took a moment for the bitterness in his eyes to pass through his system, and then he turned to you, swaying and with one under eye twitched underward. "What're you looking so concerned for? Grab a smoke, put your feet up, have a time."

You felt ridiculous; embarrassing in your tenderness. 'You're astoundly good at this act of rushing away from good emotion so that no one can recognize what you want, do you know that?"

A brow raised. "What, good enough to show up googoogaga romance babies?" His cynical, rentlessy intelligent ees despite all efforts were drenched in a dry mocking as he raised his hands. "I would say yeah, I'm good at throwing away emotional soppy garbage meaning nothing of coherent value that's only wasting everyone's time."

You paused, pressing your fingers on your elbows, eyes closed, and tried to focus on the heafy human smell of his body. It wasn't the act of exasperation that made you react the way you did; it was more so the realization, a heavy and strange one, that everything he did made you feel that strange purity that seemed as if it was unmatching in the world that surrounded you as you knew it. It was meant to be transcended from whatever was making up the drugs that surrounded you, or the superficial touches and words of interactions that dressed them, a certain eternal rest that was teasing in the details of the wake of his air that signified for some strange long awaited eternal rest. You only knew you needed the confirmation that he needed and felt it.

But what a cobweb.

"Wait-that was actually a good idea. You wanna grab a smoke?" Bojack let out a huffed breath as he just hardly managed to catch himself on the side of the seat of the cushions that rested on the side of the wall. He laughed messily as he just barely caught himself on the side of the edge of the bed, eyes twitching and back twisted as he body slammed against it while he tried to catch himself, then gave another drunken breath.

You rushed forward in an unintentional and natural act, kneeling downward as your hand caught on his shoulder. He swung his head around as he let out a bumbled and awkward breath as his eyes twitched and his head swayed, looking at you with the conflict of detached air in his eyes.

"You should wipe that look off your face. It'll make your skin crinkle, and believe me when I say that's the last thing you want. You'll end up in the back with one of the muscle l bodybuilders who could never figure out marriage, so they settle for some older woman who can't get with anyone because she's, you know, old." His body leaned lazily behind the bed as your hands guided him back by the wall, arm slung sloppily against it as he watched you with his twitching eyes. "Just saying."

"You can't throw me, you know."

Confusion glinited in his eyes. "Throw what? Who's trying to throw anything?" His eyes widened, and his head snapped towards the front of the crowded space. "Nothing to do with my dead body over my balcony, right? That one didn't get out. I've been so good at keeping that one to myself. That eventual plan if I was ever at a party that ever got too bad, I mean."

A breath something almost akin to laughter left your lips, but it was ended just as quickly with the realization of his manic and confirmed unhinged mindset that was the sign and the idea that he was, undoubtedly, just as sabotaging anf treated himself just as unwell, as expected from the way he looked and talked at the beloved; as if he were the permeant expectation, and had to meet them with judgement in kind.

If it had been anyone you had been connected to less, sympathy of some kind would have been gandered for as long as they were an even remotely compelling or worthwhile person-as it was with the chubby, tender hearted and lost expression of a stumbling desperation of a lost aimless sabotaging, naturally paternal and something begging to be cradled and sharply cutting in the ways that mattered and ended in gentleness above all else, you couldn't give in, no matter how much it ws promised that logislly, it wouldn't be a glamrours wya going forward.

Every combination he was was something that you knew you couldn't resist, as if interwoven and embodied towards whatever you were made of of what you needed. You knew it would some sort some of spiritual end if you were unable to, at the very least, hold him, though any comfort you were lucky to grant him you knew would never come close to what you wanted to give him, the race of his wounds already having been long since emnedded and could never be fully healed, but, in an ironic fashion that only by the purposeof loving him with every capability you had that much more rearwading, you knew you were called to, and you knew you couldn't live without loving on him; true love threw seemed to throw someone that way.

"Emotion is admitting that you want something, and that makes you vulnerable to people being able to destroy you. Don't suffocate yourself for that just so that you can have cheap, temporary protection from it." You tired to speak your own piece, your eyes easing agsisnt him even as you felt your cheeks redden.

He laughed. "Emotional indulgent people are like babies in grown skin. Emotion is something you conjure up for acting sets to get a fat paycheck and then go home and drown said emotions in whiskey. That's the right way to go about it. Everything is mostly just conjured up self internalized dama that people lean on for the sake of pretending they're in the movies they wish they were in. That the meaning they wish life had was as compelling as much as we pretend."

His head turnd around to you with his ears lowered, voice somber, compelling-your hands found their natural place by his shoulders and a shadow overcame his expression as that same softened admitted breath lef this lips as he looked down now and had is eyes focused on where your eyes were looking up to him, your cheek fully leaned on his shoulder. Something changed in his expression; something more tender, curious, soft edged, profound; the kind of soul you could spent the rest of your life processing and could never quite understand, much less grow weary of.

His snout leaned against the curves of your face,, and for a moment was there that softened naturally, a smoothness of a rhythm, and for a moment was there peace; there was a wrought right in the world, even for him.

You knew, without knowing but sensing it just enough to meet the sensation, that the appearance of what he was and his mood and its execution was all pointed signs that he felt he wasn't worthy of the way that was taking care of Diane; there was a certain kind of uncaring and chaotic distaste to his perception of jaded black that made him unresponsive to such tenderness, knowing that as a man in his position would always be expected to be the forefront of the one executing affection with someone in his position of entitlement, both from being male and being esteemed with fame, but the needs of the heart, especially one as tender and wrought into complications as much as his, didn't follow the rules of gender or expectations of positions of power; it needed what it needed, and it would implode in more ways than one if they weren't met.

You inched yourself further towards the side of him under you felt the plush of his body against your own. His mane grazed against your skin and you felt the way his snout pressed against the curve of your neck, and your eyes closed as even the blast of the music faded. Bojack gave a timid, gentle breath, and then you felt the most tender sensation of all; that handsome curve of his cheek that met that humble but oddly handsome face as he gave the lovability of his cheek resting on top of your head.

Slowly did you reach out a hand as it grazed against the side of his cheek; it was so round and full against the side of your fingertips, and somehow, in the most sweet and tender fashion, that was enough to make an ache in your chest that was pained that only came from a harrowment that was contrived from loving too deeply-and it seemed clear to you that it was dedicated and could only be inspired from him.

"This is-nice." Bojack hitched the words, but it was clear that he meant it, and your eyes closed as you turned your lips beside the long mold of his snout as you leaned the curves of you face beside his.

"It is."

You suqeezed your hand against the side of his own palm. He was too drunk to fight; too gone to pretend like it wasn't as sweet for him to receive it as it was for you to give it. For that was what it was; the giver and the reciever, and it was a melt of two who had waited, if it could have evr been gaurnrteed for something so unpredictable and uncertain and not gaunrterred, to have been met.

His black puffy eyes turned to you as they twitched while he lifted his snout up from your shoulders, only a slight inch from where it rested on the curve of your neck, as he turened to looka t you. It was then in that moment, full with the stuck out of his hart and the swaying of the incha nd the messies of his from of his eyes and puffy laded bags and twitch of his sleepy expression that his humanity, in all authentic rawness, was the only worthwhile of concievable or worthwhile beauty in that moment. He only needed let it pour itself out in full.

"Sweetheart." Your hand reached out, threading beside his cheek as you gave a slight hitch of your own satisfaction, Boacjk wincing as his ears lowered while he leaned his cheek forward and looked you over; he was taking in the warmth now, and letting it out out rather than having the wall of the build of denial. Your eyes flicked across his expression in wonderment. "There you are. As much of a disarray and engagement in the sheets as I thought." Your hand grazed on one fo his soppy bangs, pulling it back, and his durken eye twitched. "You sweet, gentle darling."

He closed his eyes, and the full wear of age showed as he frowed; that wonky form that overcame people's features after a certain age. "Ok. Now I know I'm not the one that had too much to drink. And I'm not going to follow whatever fantasy you have going on. No Joe."

"Well-at least let me sit with you until this passes. Ths feeling-it feels like something that I've been wanting in all the small mundane activities, themes, trails of thought that I've ever followed and heard other people say throughout my life that always left me empty. I would alays expect for there to be this massive, grand spiutal reveal at the end; but there was only a stoic stganace of munsanity of the same on the other side, no matter what it was."

Bojack's eyebrows raised as he looked you over.

"Yeah?"

"This feels like the closest thing to satifciaiton; something that is just as enduring and just as complex as much as I am. Something to fill the emptiness, the longing, where there was previously nothing there."

"Ok." Bojack's face furrowed, and he eased his hadn beside yours as he helped your palm reach off of it. Your eyes dimmed as you looked him over while he readjusted. "This metaphor you're using; you're not saying it with any chance that you expect me to be this perfect, contrived idea of me saving you from something, right. We're clear on who I actually am?"

"Of course. I mean-"

The jaded challenge eased across Bojack's expression as he watched you while you turned your eyes down in thought, rolling your shoulders.

"I don't come from a good place in life. I don't really know much of anything-"

"Yeah. Exactly. And I know that. And this isn't the first time I gripped a woman by her hook and took her because I knew she wouldn't know any better."

Your eyes turned up to him inndefiance. "Is that how you see me?"

"Not coniosuly." His pout increased as his gesture to you to make a point began to ease down into something more modest. "But it wouldn't be the frist time I've been accused of that-or that there wasn't some logic or reason that followed that even I couldn't deny, and I don't think it will be the last, either."

His snout let out a hum as it grazed against your face, the whiskey of his breath easing against your cheek. He let out a mumble, low, rasped, distracted and broken up, shaky and detached as his snout pressed further against your skin.

"You get about five minues before I-" He gave a soft hitch, easing his snout beside you. "-Start to get up and get some more booze."

You let out a hum, though truthfully there was nothing that could be spoken that could have equivalent to the feeling of the soft plush of his body and the warmth of it against your own; it was a release of breath, a infliction of tension that had been inside of you from the sheer act of not being able to hold him; it had been a physical ache that had haunted you before you had even known him; that tender and irreplaceable desire to keep his body pressed against your own where you had longed fo him before you even knew him.

"Is it that bad, being able to think clearly while being near me?"

"No." Bojack gave a soft rumble, breath eased across your face as his snout ease beside your cheeks. "Just saying that I meant what I said that I want to be fully blacked out night."

You turned your head to the side, your nose grazing beside Bojack's snout.

"Why?"

Bojack sighed, ears his snout across your face, and your eyes trailed while you tired to follow his detached and indirect messienss of his complcaiton as he turned his head to the side.
"Forget it." He squeezed his arms around your body. "It's not important right now. Another time."

Another mumble of that drunken and tender rasp of his lips, tender and insecure, and you shivered as you felt the way goosebumps littered your skin against the feeling of his breath and the warm ease of his arms around your waist, the sense of home almost too profound for you to know what to deal with.

You wanted to push him; push his happiness, push your desires that was beyond what you could understand. But you knew what life was like out there; you knew that the reality of things, especially from your own experience, that even the slightest minute of a need that was met or the slightest relief was something that wasn't promised, and that you were lucky to even gather that much. The bittersweet truth of reality was that there was very little, if any, promise that the incessant sense of profound humanity, of being seen, and home wasn't promised; far from it. Your throat choked, and you felt something both black with the heaviness of depth and something with a large extent of meaning passing through you, and you settled for feeling his roud cheek eased across the top of your head.

"Nice and warm. Considerably tolerable." You felt the way his lips pressed against your shoulder, and you shivered at the feeling of the intuition of a kiss. It was incredibly gentle, charming, the way he touched you; mature and insightful towards how someone like you wanted to be touched, and it surprised even you how much there was a chemistry of his charm as your hands gripped beside his arm and closed your eyes while Bojack rocked you against him. "Incredible."

The word was softly spoken, as if only meant to be whispered to whatever private secret that he had towards the compelling observation that he felt you wanted. If you had been endowed by his voice before, then you were of a certain company of a complete surreality of the way he sounded to you now; every tone of his sofly rasped voice, fun and easy going yet sharply and naturally inclined towards that of which truly mattered and that which didn't, as naturally combined in what everything good and human was, as far as you were concerned, coming in full resolve eventually, and as you felt the thought enter your mind, you realized it was the first time you had ever truly felt hope.

Normal conversations seemed unnatural in the wake of how you felt. In a more modest circumstance, or perhaps if you had been a person who knew what it felt liek to feel like you were deserving of being alive and of fighting for something resmeblng happiness or even survirial-had he been a little more dunk and more enfolded under the sheets, had he been a little more familiarized in your loveor, better yet, if this had been one of those afternoons where his insecurity and your desire to love intertwined and came together while there was that softly spoken mumble of his own words as he spoke every invitation for you to love him just by speaking-you would have made a bolder move.

His fingers eased against your hair while yours caressed his round cheeks, your kisses and touches of intimacy pressed against his skin. You would have done it all; what you had wanted to do every moment you took him in.

You would have talked to him with such soft intentions of desire and titrated delicate intention of comfort and consideration-the most purely you had ever executed such a thing, or had even known you could, and how wonderfully it felt to be able to execute it. To love him was your own saving grace; to love him was your sense, purpose, and end of any otherwise preferred comfort. It was your dream when his body and fight unfolded and to he instead collapsed, and for a time was there nothing but that gentle and interwoven impurity that felt so good with the ache that you could love him and every interwoven detail of that impunity. There was nothing more resounding than his charmed disgrace.

For the time being did you feel as if there was a wall that was brought on by the black of insecurity that came from whatever love he had for Diane and the insight he saw of himself in her and the way she was treated; not because he had the desire to love her, but there was something he saw in her that compelled him to feel a particularly jealousy that a different version of him was worthy of the love and consideration that, as of yet, he had only allowed himself in the drunken parts of when he was too far gone to care about what he felt he didn't deserve.

You should have settled for this; to cradle him while his snout pressed with a defeat of tender allude into your neck. He was drunk, and this wasn't truthful and different from those other nights-not yet, but there was a new wound that was being executed, and you felt a deepened desire to go and follow it, heal it- to at the very least mask it.

You couldn't resist, and with the combination of that dark glint in his eyes that gave away that he was so used to be treated as nothing, to not getting anything that was even close to the delicate precious way Diane was with , it was impossible to not make a bolder step forward.

"Sweetheart."

"Sweetheart." He said it was a playful drunken mock, though his tone was somber, his eyelids lowered as he eased his palm beside your cheeks, looking you over. "Look at you."

He was deflecting. But his voice had a hint into it of an appreciation, and something inside of it seemed to break. You turned your fingertip under his chin and your finger grazed under his lip. He raised a hand and squeezed it against your own.

"Finding you in here. Like this-"

"Hey. I'm fine. Really. I went back there so I could get away from the white noise for a bit. Gets you down. Me down, I mean. Especially when everyone is more than likely up your ass at some point asking you for…whatever they come up with. If anything." His eyes turned down as he gripped his fingers on your palm. "There's always something, and I always have to do it. Be it. Whatever it is. And I know, getting foggy black out drunk is hardly the betterment of an option, but-" A soft breath. "It works, right?"

You felt the words leave your lips before they even went through your mind. "You deserve to be treated the same way a woman partner would be treated. The same way you watch her feel treated."

Bojack lifted his eyes up from where his hand was rested against your cheek. He laughed, eyes squinted in drunken bewilderment. "A woman. I should be loved like a woman. You really said that?"

"Not what I meant. I don't mean that as some political statement." His eyes turned down as his ears lowered, and you kept your hand cupped by his cheek, if only to keep him grounded with you and your trail of thought. "Like the way a woman partner is expected to be treated by her male counterpart. You deserve to be cradled, cherished, held, considered, soppily sought after, adored, laden in adoration. Tenderness."

"Honey." Bojack's eyes snapped up to yours, a guard in his expression. "This is a lot."

"You deserve to be lavished in intimacy, spoiled with comfort, ribboned and gently wrought in every single way. You're a sophisticated beauty, it just comes out of your naturally whether you mean for it to or not, but more than than that are you so, so delicately soft and sweet considerate, graceful, forgiving-"

"Please."

"-You've dealt out so much grace to people who don't deserve it and you've been doubly punished for things that were a misunderstanding of an entangled heart and good intentions more than a crime. And the worst part is that you've never been seen."

He blinked slowly but frantically, as if fully processing your words, or attempting to-and therefore the punishment he felt that should have been coherently followed. His hand pressed on your own, pulling you away slightly. "I'm letting you speak because I know it helps you and I want to try to give you that. But don't-"

"Let me speak. You deserve to hear this. No matter the outcome, your heart is the same; an astounding level of purity. I can't even believe it exists, that its survived everything that it has despite all odds-and its still the most pure and true thing I've ever come to know. When I look at you, there's just purity; raw purity,and it hurts how much you've been jammed the narrative from yourself and others the label of unremakrability, of this idea of being this asshole-"

"I prove that all the time. These people aren't throwing insults for nothing."

"- when there's nothing but a white remarkablity in you."

"White." He raised a brow. "Specifically white."

"Purity. I know it's cliche." You smiled, gentle, uncertain, but content; and confident, despite the almost unacceptable vulernability of your words."Lots of things are. But it's the only thing worth living for, really, whether people admit it or not."

His eyes darted down in thought, and slight pause was in his breath that ghosted against your face, and though there was that invitation that eclipsed towards that tender romanticism that was of the same connected ancient sense of longing of what you were that only came from people who had any insight into anything worthwhile, his jadedness seemed to reign over his admittance of it.

"Funny that plenty of people go without it, then. Or that people still will even if they don't get it. And look at them-they're fine. And anyway, no amount of self help advice can change someone's nature anyway. Life makes everyone have to learn to take care of themselves just by virtue of nature. It makes all of us learn the same lessons."

"And how does that feel? You're stumbling drunk and can't even see straight. You live alone and have to cope with constant distraction. When will you let yourself breathe?"

His eyes lowered as he looked away from you, emotion in his eyes dry at your words. "Ok. Thank you for that specific execution."

Your hand rested on the side of his love handles, and you focused on that specific detail; the genuine sense of the way his skin and the mold of the plush felt against yours, the warmth of it. If you were to feel to the full extent of how much you loved him, you knew it would lead to something that you wouldn't be able to control. You wanted to catch him, in any way he would have allowed you to.

"You don't need to live like this. You act like you chose it, but it doesn't have to be that way. It never has."

"That's been the opposite of what I've seen. Back to the drunk and distraction thing-that's the entire point. That's more often than not usually the point of being drunk. Constant denial. Separation. Whatever else works that a person can fall into. Who cares, right? It's all the same at the end. Some people just have a better time than others."

He turned back to the entanglement of erratic tenderness that was and Diane; she was now resting on the side of his arms, her eyes closed, black mascara turning down her cheeks as talked to her smoothingly. "Not unlike idiots who are stupid enough to reel in whatever intelligent woman they can get who believes they become someone they can get. Which they can, probably. So good for them. Who am I to judge."

Dark glinted in his eyes, and there was heaviness that seemed as if it somehow executed further to the general detail of his air; ears lowered, and the beauty of his timidness and that fragility of his heart seemed to execute softer against the details of his body and cynical but authentic and somber words. Your hand pressed under his snout' but he frowned, pressing his hand against the side of yours and pulling it away.

"Take it easy. You've made your point. You want to give me something." His fingers caressed yours, but it seemed accidental; or more of a natural response that he hadn't realized he was doing, almost as if it was a natural default of response.

"You have to want it." Your fingers grazed against his again in insistence, and Bojack gave a breath as he eyes his dry eyes downward. "I want to give it to you." You tilted your head to look him over. "Let me try."

He let out a breath. The smell of the whiskey that overpowered that natural branwy, homely scent left his lips as it grazed against your hand.

"I know. Soppy drunk man can't take affection from sober woman. Cliche as anything-which is, most things, after a certain age, you come to find." A curve of a humored and bitter reflection raised on his lips, only hinted at, but you read him well as your lip raised up in understanding, or the attempt of it, as your eyes guided across his expression. "But a woman coming around and finally having someone show her something she was never shown before and thinking that some ass is helping her just for showing her basic decency. Now there's a Hollywood cliche as old as time."

"I don't care about anything other than loving you."

Your lips grazed against his ear, the tip of it tender to the response of your touch, and there was a soft mumble from his end; it almost seems like an admittance, incoherent and broken up, but still a small admittance. You rocked him towards the side gently, the rhythm of it bringing a peace to what was otherwise a disassociated and unstructured night. "I don't care what's cliche, true, admired, loud or wanted or how its perceived; I only want to know what it feels like to love you. I can't help it; you're a intertwined tenderment, sweetheart. You're so precious to me. I wish I could cradle you so impossibly gently, and even then it still wouldn't be enough."

He let out a mumbled grunt, eyes traced with humor. "Heavy."

Your fingers traced his ears. "Insightful?"

"Possibly. Under circumstances where someone was able to hear it in the way it's meant to be heard."

The sentence made your gaze pause as you looked into him. He was in that detached headspace that rendered him to a comforting surreality; a sloppy drunk that was rendering him completely estranged from the rest of the reality in the most unhealthy way imaginable.

"You gentle thing."

"Gentle. Gentle. Weird. Never heard that word before." There was a press of his lips to your shoulder; it seemed second nature, and, knowing his awkward uncertainty towards any other level of response or to any level of profound intimacy, you knew that it was only because he was too far gone to concern himself with any worry about repercussions. "I mean, I have. But I can't remember what it means, especially if it were in regards to me."

Your fingers grazed his black bangs that sat bewteen his ears; you didn't care anymore, and neither did he. Another mumble from his lips, eyes squinted, and you knew every day he would be more beautiful, more astounding and compelling than the last, most especially in acts of the broken natures that made him up. Love felt trifle, naive and almost too simple to comprehend or to be excited about when certain truths had been reached in comparisons to the complexities of what made up existence, but something about falling into someone worthwhile that exuded it, someone that was worthwhile to falling into, was impossible to resist; it was too heavy, too true; to relieving; not completely unlike a literal need, as anything was.

"I hope there's never one day I stop seeing you."

"It does feel incredible." Bojack's voice chuckled, soothing, edged against your skin in agreement. "Soothing. Like whatever anxiety or black void there was before I had to deal with is just-soothing now. A part of a bond."

He was letting the words flow out, awkward and clumsy with his sloppy drunken episode, but simple and ture to their message of how he felt; it was at least somewhat of a comfort away from the noise that served as a tide towards the constant distraction towards whatever it was that mattered that has made up his life, and unlike someone less aware, he had always been aware that it would never be close to enough, and had never once been tricked by it.

He let out a mumble, soft and sweet in the way only his tone ways, and then a hum, and then a rest of his snout against the curve of your neck. It was the rhythm of the way he allowed himself to gently wrought against your body that gave away the irresistible melting he had against your body.

"Did you know you have the most beautiful voice when you allow yourself to simply feel?" you murmured by the tip of his delicate ear.

"You might be onto something. Not that we need to keep analyzing it. We got the general consensus of the night. Stumbling drunk, trips over his feet, goes home with a temporary girlfriend."

Temporary. You weren't surprised that he was dressing this up as what he knew and had known; anything meaningful was taught to be beyond worth putting any emotional trust into. It simply wasn't worth believing in to begin with. He could experience it, but trust was something too far gone for him.

"Hey. I know that sound of silence anywhere. Don't be get too attached to the ideas of how you think this should be, ok? That's the best way to hurt yourself."

"I know, it's just-" Your bottom lip tremebeld, and you began to feel the way the wet eased across your eyes as the red began to flair by your cheeks. Your eyes turned up as you looked him over, then fluttered your eyes down, your headspace foggy and bewildered as you eased your eyes down. You could feel Bojack's naturally sweet eyes beginning to follow you, complex and wandering in something profound and tender as he looked you over, head tilting as he began to follow your expression as you turned your eyes down.

"I'm just saying, don't take this too seriously, alright? Who needs it. We're here to have a good time. We've been together to have a good time. That's all anything ever needs to be. The more you try to figure something out, the less sense it makes. Trust me, I know."

"But I feel like there should be-more." Your eyes flickered down as you felt the trail of wet; your emotion overcoming you from something you didn't understand, your lip opened as you tried to recenter yourself to breathe.

"Hey-the fact that I didn't just sleep with you and leave after a week-that's unheard of. I'm sorry that I can't give you a better standard."

There was a genuine somber acknowledgment in his voice, and your eyes turne down as you kept your expression eased down in thought. Bojack gave a breath as he rolled his shoulders, then winced as he looked you over. "Let's just enjoy this for what it is, ok?"

There was no immediate answer, the way it was with any given conversation that was worth anything; with him, it was every one. When it came to walking such delicate wroughts of questionable truths that was excuded from him, spoken in his own intertwined code of timid probability and uncertainty, you were both astounded with ache for desire while also being paralzed with want to comfort him; but it was so precious, so long since you had neared the capacity of the ability to do something that you had been waiting for before you knew you were that it seemed as if any approach towards it would be far from good enough.

For the time being, you settled for the gentle sway of back and forth that Bojack was excutuing without even meaning to, and you dared to turn your head to the side of his cheek, round and soft and full, with your lips, mouth settling to graze under the black puffiness of his under eye bag while it traveled agains it. A mumble left his mouth, a flick of his ears, then an inch of his head turned to you, completely disgruntled but admittedly accepting towards the tender pattern you were giving; it was forgien to him, but still did he go to it in a natural pattern he didn't understand.

"It feels so good to hold you."

His hands were pressed against yours the same way your palms were grazed against his sweater, strained and stained with the uncaring acts that had slung whisky he had thrown on it and every other lack of care.

"Well, I guess we can both try to enjoy it for at least one night. Not to say that I'm expecting you to be out by the morning, or anything-it's just-you seem to know who you're looking at, and I agree with you. And I think it would benefit the both of us to keep moving forward with the truth and to accept where this ends than me trialing you around with a lie."

"I'm saying what I mean."

"Yeah? Very sweet. But you should try this new thing; it's called stop and consider why you're doing it and to what extent it's going towards. Might help you out."

"I won't."

"Of course not. I didn't expect you to. But it was worth a try."

"Thank God I won't."

"Sure." A small raise of his lip, meeting his eyes somberly, as his expression met on yours. "Thank God. For tonight."

"I'd like to think that you'll let me stay here for a little while. Not just at your house." Your head leaned forward against his chest, feeling the thudding of his heart and the warmth of his embrace, trailing that declaite thread known as meaning where you were aware on the other side was the stagance and the suffering of existence.

"I'm sure I'll do something to make you chnage your mind. How hard can it be, really?" He laughed, raspy and heavy toned, and he said it as if it was obvious, and even that clear emotional sabotage throwed you into an ache for the stability of comfort you knew you could give him, should he let you. "I do it every day."

The plush of his love handles were felt through it, and mixed with that sharp and dark troubled intelligence of his eyes you knew it was impossible not to lead into the ache you felt for him.

"Don't do this."

"Oh, come on. We both know what this is."

"I wan-"

"I'll tell you something before I lose all sense of self control." He waved his hand up in front of you, ears lowered, muscles on his face tense. "You don't do this. This is the good old-fashioned approach to me being the receiver, which I never do. Am I the one that needs it the most? More than likely. Does that mean we both need to kid ourselves? Absolutely not."

Your lips grazed against his ear. "Why am I not good enough to commit to?"

"You are. To someone."

There was genuine kindness in his voice; some part of his conflicted heart truly did want the best for whatever the situation garnered, in whatever way the twisted and insecure part of his foggy mind meant. His eyes squinted, giving away his uncertainty. "To someone." His eyes turned up to meet yours again as his hands eased beside your hips, pulling you back from where you were gazing down beside the vulenrbaility of his eyes as he met yours, hands eased by your hips as he looked at you with insistence. Your lips parted, and the words ghosted themselves out.

"Why can't I love you?"

Bojack sighed, separating his body from yours; but it was only for a few inches. His head turned down as his hands ghosted from your hip, your fingers resting on the side of his mane as his fingers pressed against the entanglement of your chest eased further beside his body.

"Because-it's too good."

"What is? Companionship?"

His eyes snapped up in exasperation. "If that was the case, I wouldn't be smashing ass with God know who previously."

"If you think that's something you deserve to keep from yourself, you're never going to make it, Bojack. I've seen what happens with people who make those kind of decisions, and this is the easiest thing I'll ever say-" Your fingers traced the side of his ear. "I love you too much for that. In a more selfish way, I've waited too long to love you for that. And I don't care how ridiculous or naive that sounds. I love you; that's all there is, that's all there ever has been, even before I knew it. I love you, Bojack."

Your voice was soft in a way that was only reserved for people who had the focus to love someone deeply and to focus their thoughts, morals, grounding, energy and focus on that person and that person alone; and as he turned and squinted at you in question you knew you both felt the inconceivable benefit of it, wrought with that rich romanticism that you were convinced had been saturated in other wrong corners of the world so it could finally be led to him.

He winched. He kept the deep end conflict in his eyes away. Somehow, even then, he felt a certain transcending towards a different place of that of which was far from perfect or exciting, but that didn't matter. That grounded beauty of somewhere he was was so compelling towards you that you knew it was were you were meant to be; it hurt, in a humble and gentle way, not unlike the conflicted swaying and baggy eyed confliction presented in front of you.

"Don't-say that. Especially like that."

"The truth?"

"No. I mean, I don't know. With all your little whispery tone things. You don't-" He sighed as he turned his eyes downward in thought. "You don't know what those words mean. And I don't either. Not really."

Your eyes raised. Not in a challenging fashion; you could never give him that. "You're right. Maybe I don't. But who does?"

"No." His eyes closed, muscles crunching in frustration. "What you have to give. Give it to someone else. Have fun with me and then go somewhere else, ok? It's alright. I'm like a fun little playground that you get to swing and have fun with and shit." His hands cupped your cheek as you met your expression, easing his eyes across yours in earnest. "And I'm ok with that. I promise."

He giving you a gesture of his hands that was of a teasing and snapping fashion. In that casual way that shared that same sense of humor you did where even detrimental situations weren't meant to be taken too seriously, he could find that consist and flexible, borderline insane humor as a reflection of someone who had seen and experienced enough black to get to the point where they no longer were affected by whatever heaviness that would make a normal person quake. Bojack had accepted his suffering; and as a result, he had bcome it, rather than to be modled by it. It had become his comfort and sense of reality, rather than something to be improved and feared or ashamed of, and as a result, he was no longer fighting it but easing into it.

Some saw it as superficiality; you saw it as that at first, and ever now and then still, but in an increasingly deep ache of how you wanted to dress and love it did you conitnue to see the life, depth, of everything that could be done with intentions to know and love another better ever could. He didn't need deep reasons to be the way he was to be worth loving; but you saw that beauty and depth in him whether intended or not, even if it was from your own observation.

"You know what the most devastating thing was that I had to learn about being human?"

"I'm assuming the-homeless part?"

"No one was obligated to love me. No one was obligated or promised to feel connected to me. If I became too lost in my mind, if I ever tired to express myself or to do anything that was an execution of my existence, the default was that I would be doing it and ending it alone. And the hardest part of accepting that was that no matter how much I was suffering, it was justified. Or rather, there was nothing to blame. It was simply the life I had been given-and any sense of love or companionship would be a gift. And I never got it-and there was nothing to grieve, because nothing was promised in the first place."

Bojack's eyes eased across you, gently, with curiosity.

"And-now?"

"Now." Your eyes turned down as you gave a small nod, your fingertips easing beside his hand as his eyes followd yours in gentle pondering thought. "Now-I just want to be able to take this in for while I can. For while I have the time. For as long as the world allows me to. This feeling-you, even if you doubt yourself or even if you think that this dosen't mean what I think it does. Regardless. The feeling of being held by you, of seeing you, knowing you, has felt like the only thing that has ever mattered. I think it always was."

Bojack's expression seemed especially boyish, helpless, his eys wide, pathetic and flooded with emotion as he looked you over; no matter what else was true, it was clear he was overwhelmed by the constant small detailed thoughts and emotions that came along with human existence, and so most was left unacknowledged, pushed aside as he tried to come up with even one grounding statement in the endless complexity of human thought.

"Come on. You don't need to commit to have a good time. Who needs that garbage? That's what boring people do thinking that there's some inherent worth in commitment. Or-"

His expression winced as he turned his eyes down and thought it over in frantic thought. You squeezed your hands by his palm as you tried to reground him.

"Or someone that needs to be carried through whatever decision they decided. If I make a dumb mistake, I at least need to make sure I keep it as just that. To myself."

"But-"

"And you do not want to get caught up in that. Trust me." His eyes looked at you pointedly, head turned forward as he gazed at you abruptly with a jaded look, as much as the drunken emptiness of his eyes could manage. "That would be the wisest thing I ever did. You need to let me have that."

His drunken eyes flew upward as he squinted around the crowd that was pouring from the outside of the cracked open door. He gave a slight rasp of an uneven breath as his head swayed while he turned his eyes to the cracked open door, and his expression twisted over to the door as the bottom of his eyes winced while he swayed. His hands began to ease out of the spaces of your fingertips, and though you made an effort to keep him by you, it was clear that he made the effort to separate himself from your hands, and he gave another grunt as he eased his body off of the edge of the bed, his eyes now focused over to the front open of the door as he gradually began to ease himself up, body swaying as he did so while his hands eased in front of him while he tripped himself up with grunt.

"Where in the hell is my drink, anyway? It's not in my car?"

He snapped his hands frantically on his phone screen as he snapped it outward from his pocket lazily. Drunken aggression dressed his face as he snapped his hands on the screen.

"Hey, hey-boopbeeobop. Goddammit, stupid asslick app, where's my car?"

His eyes, distant and aggravated in a sharp something of someone who knew better, but still far gone enough in that odd timid helplessness drunken fog that sunk into you and propelled you to him to an almost painful caretaker nature turned to the door while he continued to glare across the screen, red eyes flared while they were trembling over the bags under his eyes. "I specifically made it so that this goddamn thing would call over my car if I lost it!" He waved his hand sloppily over to the crowd, hand eased across the door as he snuck his head outward, tripping over his feet as he shot his head outward.

"Hey, waiter, where's my water so I can cut down this drunk phase and get the hell home?"

One of the waiters, unfortunately enough, heard his impulsively slung words. The white cat, carrying a tray balanced delicately under her hands, turned as she offered him a quick glaze from her eyes while she was in the middle of serving another couple, high with red eyes and their fingertips strapped with herion, as she turned her sharp eyes over to where Bojack was swaying behind the door. You began to collect yourself fom the best as your eyes snapped up while your hands gripped on the sheets, beginning to ease yourself up while you ketp the grey sheets clamored on your body as much as you were able to while you began to walk your way forward, keeping the grye sheets fully eased across your body as you stumbled forward.

"Hey, hey lady. Get your whiskers over here and shoot me a glass drink, will you?" His hands continued to snap in front of him, and the cat woman's eyes glinted as she curled her body forward and began to walk over to him with the circle tray eased under her hand as she gave him a savvy glint.

"We don't reward that kind of talk, ."

Bojack raised out his hands messily, clearly meant to be mocking, but too far gone to be able to execute the intention properly, still stumbling as his weight shifted from one foot to the other. "Whas….What am I supposed to do, just wait my turn? That kind of culture is for people that didn't figure anything out." His words were slurring even further now, his head titled forward again in that abrasive drunk way, eyes dry as he made his way out the cracked door, stumbling over his feet while he stepped his way out. The cat woman's eyes widened, and she eased the slender furry hand not under the tray by Bojack's shoulders, who gave another abrupt grunt while he stumbled forward, plush torso leaned in front of him, hand pressed on the wall as he gave continuous awkward mumbled breaths. You stepped forward from the bed, your eyes turning as you looked the cat woman over while you kept behind the shelter of the door, grey sheet still gripped around your body while you stayed behind the door in the dim and purple low light.

"Sit down."

"No!" Bojack snapped his hand beside the woman, giving a wince of a breath as he grumbled and stumbled to the side.

"It'll make you feel better. I can call someone to get your car. Maybe your friend that came out of the same room as you?"

"No!" Bojack's eyes widened as he gazed over at the woman abruptly, his voice pitched and edged while he looked at her desperately. "These chairs are uncomfortable, and one problem is enough, asshole!"

He stumbled over his feet, as in with the intention to go after the cat, but only succeeded in stumbling over his legs as the cat woman walked away briskly after a moment of recollection from taking in how lost Bojack was, and far more gracefully, not bothering to hide the rolling of her eyes as she gave a quick pip of her shoulders and walked her way down the wall.

The only thing that caught Bojack and his large, bloated heafy form and even less than focused stumbling air was your hand catching on the side of his lovehandles and graduating towards his stomach; your other hand gripping the grey sheet that was wrapped around your body like a messy dress as you kept him by you. Your hand squeezed as you felt the radiation of his head responding to the touch of your hand as it pressed on his stomach, one bottom eye wincing, the other opened lazily as he snapped his head over and gazed at you with a foggy eyed glaze.

"I'll take you back to your car."

"What? Why?" He gestured lazily towards the cat woman who has disappeared down the hallway. "She's clear as gold going to get it for me. What do you think the point of being slightly above most people is?"

"You've been drinking too much."

"I haven't. I haven't." His let out a moan, turning his eyes to you as much as the detached glint of them could manage; the alcohol was truly settling in, and he was becoming more far gone now. "What I have been doing is being astoundingly good at distracting myself."

"So you admit it. You're running."

"I don't run. I never will." He stood upright, as much as his body managed, waving his arms in front of him as he swayed, as if gesturing to his form. " Put that on the list of things tonight that we both know I'll never do."

Your lips curved, but this time bitter, an exhausted attempt that showed hints of how much this was wearing by you as your hands guided against his stomach.

"You can always let something in. At least one. Something different. Or at least let someone take you home to make this all a little bit easier for a night."

"Why would I do that? I've been fine. I'm not someone that needs to be carried around like a helpless princess drunk. Even if I was, and I definitely feel that way most of the time, I would have died by now. And las titme I checked, no matter how badly, I'm still uright. So, you know. Walking on my own my whole life. I'll be fine. What I need is for this goddamn phone to work!"

His fingers slammed on the screen again as his other hand holding it gripped it tightly. Your eyes raised up as you kept the stability of your hands on his stomach, if only to keep him from falling forward.

"Goddammit, it's like they try to make this resoundly and incomprehensively insufferable! It's like they try to waste your time and your phone storage by coming up with the most complicated routes and unresponsive services so big names like me will waste their time trying to entertain it. Good job, technical America. You succeeded."

You felt his body shudder, and a choke that sounded not unlike someone on the verge of vomiting shook through his body. He gave an abrupt groan, eyes rolled back as the puffy bags on his eyes turned forward while his eyes rolled back, leaning his body forward as he gave an abrupt grunt while hands gripped by his knees, wincing as he turned his head forward as a full pouted sickliness came across his expression, teeth poked, vaguely panting.

"Let me take you somewhere to sit. At least until your body calms down."

"What-and end up passing out somewhere while some desperate no name stripper takes a photo and sends it out and pretends they had a night with me?" Another raspy chuckle, eyes squinted in that patronizing fashion that gave away that idea that he thought he knew best-in his own wayward way of how he had been forced to take a superficial perspective of the world, it was, by all means, technically true. "No thank you, I've had that happen to me enough times to have lost all interest."

Your eyes turned up to and Daine. You felt an odd compelling sadness overthrow you that you weren't cradling Bojack's round, undeniable soft cheeks around the side of your palms; that you weren't speaking to him with just as much of a soft and gentle murmur of compelling gentleness the way was getting to do to Diane right now in all of their own rhythmic romantic and compelling understanding of what they gave to one another and how they could give it. They were within each other and their rhythm and their warmth, giving each other what they needed through a transfer of rhythm of acceptance of one another, and it ached to make you see it in contrast to the sickliness of a lifestyle Bojack so easily accepted.

Diane's head was turned forward as her eyes were blinking in a drunken superior, hair falling forward in front of her face as her body was giving off signs of the drunk and sick tremor she was clearly in. 's hands was frantically pressing around her cheek, then her shoulder, and then he thigh, speaking to her gently and guiding her through it, and though she wasn't responsive enough to acknowledge it entirely, it was clear through the slight peace that glimmered in her eyes from their occasional squints that she was better off for the tenderment was giving her; and it was clear, though the soft glint of her eyes and the way she gave an occasional mumble of genteless, that she was appreciating the nourishment was giving her, and that she felt truly, resoundly loved. You could hear his concerned mummers and the softness of his lip as he spoke to her gently in that somber easy going way, the softness piercing even through the spaces of the white chaos of the moving bodies and the stark indifference from the other side of the small bar wall to the dance and bar from the small cushion Diane was sitting on.

You wished that were you with Bojack-that you could cradle him as preciously as a woman partner was expected to be treated by her male partner, and something beyond even that; that indescribable feeling where time simply passed in a soothing fashion when people were together and the weight of existence was lifted from being understood, and existence fell into its unseen but tangible purpose.

Just as tenderly, just as considerate, to go into every given disrespecting and uncaring parts of whatever wrecked him and to follow him from the inside out; it was eiriciolosu embarrassing ho much you wanted to love him as deeply as you ddi, and yet the emotion followed you thoroughly with him, the feeling warm, a stoic and natural purpose that made you know beyond a shadow of a doubt now that inner purpose was as truth and real as physical.

It wasn't beauty that you saw in him; that went without saying; it was something far more profound, deepened and a compelling sense of something about his flaws that spoke of nothing less than an astounding sense of an authentic and raw humanity-he was that for you, potbelly and his two left feet and his awkward mannerisms, inner self conflicts and contradictions all combiend agaisnt his worn but handsome face. It was all the most refreshing grounding of a true and raw experience, and his flaws matched where your caretaking wanted to find him.

His eyes followed yours. Some harrowing heaviness glinted in his eyes as he felt your hands tying to pull him back into your embrace to ease him upright fully.

"Let's at least sit down." You began to inch him over the table, and Bojack's eyes dried as he looked you over. "To make this easier. Figure out what to do."

"Easier? What's hard?" His arms waved in front of him pointedly, eyes glitned in aggression. "Because the only problem I'm seeing is the fact that no one will help me get out to my car! How many times have I stated it?"

His ears lowered slightly as he lost his balance, giving an abrupt breath as he tripped himself back beside your back, and you managed to catch him before he fell back fully. A timid something in his eyes that gave way to a narrative that seemed that it was an almost hint at regret as his expression pouted in that endearing way as his eyes met yours while you caught him before he could fall dully down. But his hand pressed on yours that was settled on his stomach, and he sharply turned his head to the other direction, his eyes pointedly turned away from you as he gave a slight wince meant to turn away from your eyes.
"Hey, don't-don't get caught up in that wishy washy shit of thinking you need to help me to get back home. That's for no back boned losers who think they have something special just because they do wooblegaga shit whenever something goes wrong." His head swung to the side, his eyes distant as he tried to pin you down in his empty aimless eyes as much as he wa sable. "You're too good for that. You can go home on your own, I'll give you keys, whatever. "

You're too good for that.

In his own emotionally twisted fashion, he was giving a led way to admiration; for someone that had such a black tinted way towards the way he saw the world and others, negativity being the main thing that would lead him towards perception.

But your care for him was different than one that would have consisted of someone who tripped over themselves with a desperation of being caught in admiration that made him seem unattainable and far from what was tender in true love; rather, what you felt for him was the desire to comfort, catch, cradle, in whatever way he could have allowed it; he was a trembling breakage of above average. But there was so much dysfunctionality in him-or at least, excessively uncomfortable; though to you they weren't flaws so much as they were something that needed to be cradled, nourished; as softly tender as much as everything he was. He was his own independent man, and he could have carried himself, but there was something in him that was desperate to be loved in an incredibly specific tender fashion, and you had a sense he wasn't from cracking without it; or if he had cracked, he was walking daily with the dysfunctionality until it took him, too tired to fight anymore.

This was what you wanted to give him, but the black edge of it all was that he wouldn't let you. He was your odd end of a means of both meaning and beauty; you were resoundly and painfully attracted to him from the way he was made, the odd natural sophistication of his air even with his clumsiness, the natural adorability of his mannerisms and squinted eyes and the playfulness his laugh and humor he gave even in his darkest of times and mess ups, the tenderness of his cushion stomach and the softness of his chub, the erratic impulsive of him that begged to be cradled and mixed in with that molded intelligence and unpredictable indescribable insight.

"Hey, before you get too caught up in trying to play hero, remember that I'm always going to have an extensive and undeniable sense of finding a way to jade this whole night from the inside out with whatever comes out of my mouth, because now that my cock has been successfully wrung and flung over by other dipshits for the night, I promise you I'll be completely and unapologetically and astoundly, remarkably pissed. As in when I'm sober. If I remember any of this."

His ears were lowered all the way back as he turned his sickly expression to you. "Just a news headline before you make your own conclusions: few months old girlfriend gets sick of fat bloated drunk no control loser. Case closed. Script done. Send in."

Despite trying to be aggressive, his eyes winced as a desperate hue came over his features while his voice became less graceful and rasped and more pathetic and uneven.

OOOOO

He tremored, only slightly, his expression grimacing as his teeth poked and one eye closed-then settled for an abrupt grunt as you began to stumble him over to the side of the couch, one of the gray cushions a little bit away from where was fawning over Diane.

His hand pressed on his ears, and he gave an abrupt sick grunt as his eyes winced while you eased him down, palms easing across his cheek, tender, pathetic, timid as he began to ease himself down onto the couch.

"Alcohol," he explained, briefly. He gave a sickening breath, oddly endearing, as he gave an abrupt shudder. "It's starting to take me over. The sick part. Not the fun or the escape part. Not the part where you have to think over the inevitability of needing to have your own grounding inside of yourself and you can't expect the world to always be this perfectly connected cobweb of emotion."

Your eyes searched back and forth between his own as he continued to give abrupt breaths, eyes winced in a sickening fashion as his palms kept on his ears while he tried to keep himself centered from the sickness shuddering through his body, giving sickly coughs, expression turned down as he kept his hand son his ears while clearly trying to keep himself from a sickening reaction.

"Thank you for letting me sit you down." Your body kneeled in front of him, expression searching across his in relief as you looked him over while Bojack's teeth poked, hand pressed on his snout as it trailed from his ears. Your hand rested on the curve of his panting and bloated stomach, his eyes squinted as he felt a sickness ease through his body while he felt your hand ease on your palm.

Bojack's eyes turned away, as if to express a disinterest, though there was too much of a tremor of something that seemed not unlike a scared youth that was buried inside of him, wanting to escape far more than any extensive and independent large ego alcoholic was. For the time being, it seemed as if he was having a wave of sickness too deep to respond. "I know it's not easy, the way this night is panning out, but just remember, everything alls to disinterest with stagance eventually; all forms of existence or anything that makes it up. There's nothing wrong with feeling a little disgruntled with chaotic nights like this; it's part of what builds the bridge towards the next thing."

'Cool." Bojack's eyes lowered downward as he watched your hands curl against his arms for a moment, your hands gudining across the stains on his sweater while you attempted to regounrd the both of you from his wave of sickly panic and back to the present moment.

Your hands grazed on his arm-the same sweat stained clothes that were laced in other forms of lack of care. He flinched as he turned and looked at you, arm pulled back, and though he was in a sense of sickness and exhaustion, he was brought back to reality for a moment as something inside of him flinched back, arm turning away as he looked you over, body curling in on himself.

"What's your deal?"

As if pushing himself to the extent of what he was capable of, his body abruptly flung forward, hand pressed on his curve as he gave a sudden sickening grunt of his breath, teeth poked as his head jutted forward. A pained word left his mouth. "Goddammit-the alcohol is dicking me in ways I can't even comprehend."

You were at whatever end of patience that you had been granting him in the hope that the peace you wanted to give him would somehow stay him in whatever language he spoke for comfortability. You needed to offer him comfort, the same way he evidently needed it; but you needed to push further.

"Sh." Your body came down by his; his rhythm of the blink and squint of his eyes seemed too distracted to respond, but your hands found the side of his snout as your fingers laced under his skin, and Bojack gave a shudder as he closed his worn eyes as eased his cheek beside your palm.

"Don't make this your problem." His sickening twist of his expression gave way to what could have been seen as apology as he turned his dry eyes to you."Go home."

"There's nothing there that I don't already want here."

Boajck's eyes flickered between your eyes. A hum left his lips, though that unpleasant sickliness didn't leave his expression, and any grace was broken up from the sickness of the alcohol. " I would almost think that you were doing this for some celebrity charity storywork to tell the next newspaper, if it weren't for that look in your eyes."

A curve tugged on the edge of your lips.

"I'm glad that's at least one way I can reach you with my language." Your hand caressed against his back again, and Bojack's eyes rolled up as he shuddered and jolted his body forward again. "No matter how futile."

Something glinted in Bojack's eyes; his expression turned downward as a dark of conflict came into his expression, though there was plenty of leadway towards that intimacy that, somewhere, was invited to that soft timidness that felt as it wrung itself towards whatever he would listen to.

"Mhm." His eyes turned down, sickly actions displayed towards the way his ears lowered and that cut up consideration overcame his eyes; uncertain and shattered up.

"You're breaking, sweetheart. We should get you home."

"No. I hate it there." Bojack's voice was somber, eyes wincing as his body leaned forward, ears lwoered, and from the sickly wear on his features, you could tell me meant it. "Please. Just let me try to ease it ou here for a little while. We can worry about anything after."

'You could lie down. I could make it feel a little more like home."

You tried to speak the words softly, kindly; the patience of what you executed was bringing itself firmly forth to whatever specific laden hidden secret he kept himself in, so secret for the sake of protection that you were sure not even he knew it, even as he suffered for it. Your body leaned down towards the side of his until you were met by the warmth of his skin; the beauty of his tender delicaedy was enwrapped by stains and smells of aimlessness, but that could have never thrown you.

His eyes dared to you, and through rasps and pants he managed;

"You have nothing to prove."

The disgruntlement was an interruption over the rhythm in his features that was brought together if only from weariness of life and age as an emotion came over his expression at your words. If it had been possible to isolate yourself into the given narrative of observation, you would have taken that of which he granted you, just from that pained beauty of boyish consideration that gilded his features.

"Yeah, I'll tell that to the several beer stains I'll wake up to in the morning-" Another grunt, a painful sound that sounded like something between a burp and a painful moan, one eye closed. "If I do. If I was left here, maybe it would be what I would've asked for and deserved this entire time."

"You will." Your hand pressed on the side of his body. "I'll make sure you do, at least for this one night, no matter what other ones come ahead after."

"Sure." A distant leeway of distrungled disgust from the sickliness that overcame his body again as the muscles on his facce treamored and he gave a shudder, a feeling of his body pressing against yours in his heavy disassociated discomfort. "And I'm sure the next hookup here would be a desperate attempt to execute some form away from inedible madness from their absolutely shit, piss lives." His eyes turned up somberly, looking at nothing but the purple hue walls. "Not that I'm the one to talk."

You paused as you took in the somber reflection of his tone, and you allowed the somber feeling of his tone and the autehnetic loathing and bewilderment to ease through his tone as he spoke. You allowed his words to sink for what he meant them as; allowed them to sweep through to breathe though where he was at emotionally so that that part of him could be processed fully, rather than to end it abruptly. It wasn't as if you knew the answers of right or wrong anyway; no one did.

Two simple words come to your lips that somehow eased your confliction of wanting to guide him, and yourself through the inevitable of your love for him, through his entanglement.

"Be gentle."

His head turned to you, your fingers guidining under his chin, and causing his face to turn to you.

"I'm sorry?"

"Just for tonight." When Bojack tired to turn his head away as he gave an aaburpt breath, your fingertips gudied under his chin to turn him back. "I know that it sounds corny, or unrealistic, but I didn't get here tonight, you didn't make the choice to come here with me and to take me in because we were belviieng in negative thought after negative thought. Something good came out of that. Let's believe in it."

His eyes twisted up into a glare at several passengers that came by; most of them were lanky and dressed tightly in a discomforted form of their outfits. Some onlookers were a form of detestment, some only lightly hinted at, most completely disregarding with a look on oncoming disgust.

"Look at these loonies. You'd think they'd never seen a drunk horse on his ass before. There's onlookers-they're taking the sea by the mighty powers that be of strip clubs and whiskey, we and I. And they love eating it up."

His head swayed, and he let out another grunt. "How much longer until one of these women become interested in smashing and not just passing by? They get better looking with every whiskey, but it does take awhile."

"Come here."

Your arms twisted around his own; something not unlike a raspy laugh left his lips as he allowed himself to be pressed into your embrace. A golden lightness overcame you as you realized he was, for the first time, allowing himself to be truly and deeply embraced into your arms for the first time that night. It wasn't a celebrity feeling that came over you; it was something inherently related to humanity, a lightness over taking you where previously there had been heaviness for reasons that had been too complicated into a dirty detail of being human to be able to identify.

Several looks were thrown at from the gazes that passed by the both of you; the look of a more well curved cat who's corset framed her form that had left her to uncomfortability towards living, the passing by of a dolphin woman who kept her eyes firmly embedded forward, as if robotic in her tides and responses to the chaos surrounding her.

"Look at them." Bojack mumbled as his body shouldered against your chest. "It's like they don't even know what they're doing, or why they're doing it. They're just taking in whatever they were given to make a living and don't even once question outside of themselves why they are who they are or why they are where they are. And they wonder why the world wrecks us around all day."

His voice lowered, body heavily leaned on yours as expression went downward.

"I wish I could manage that. Be that unreflective. I feel it even when I don't want to."

For all his erratic and impulsive mannerisms and superficial language, you were once again reminded that he was too emotionally smart for his own good. The irony to his leading misery was that it only made you feel further compulsion towards that ache of desperation to love him. Every detail you saw in him, every time he showed you who he was, you fell further into those small reminders of what made him up as the miracle he was; for that was what he was, undoubtedly; a surreal and perfectly embodied miracle that captured you with every memorization you were given.

"You feel like the consistent truth of actual life. Somewhere true, human to rest-something that is just as complex as much as I am, and I feel full for it, rather than empty and void.I'm lucky to have found you. It's a lucky thing, and there's no 'earning' it-it's just that you either find the people you're meant to love or you don't. That might be the hardest thing about love."

Your hand found the most tender part of his body; the round and bloated stomach that was made even more so from drinking too much. It felt lovably endearing and an extension of insecurity-so much of a sign of how much you were right that he needed to be softly considered and yet there was a black edge to it; it was also one of pain that gave away that he truly didn't care what happened to him or why.

For all the other ways you could have been affected that night, for every questionable act or event occurring or any concept given, both to yourself and anything regarding him, or the naval grotesque dance of the people surrounding that forlorn and foggy area that seemed as if they were content to rot-just as well, everyone did at some point, anyway, this was just the detail that throttled you with an odd pause of grief; what was a tender execution of softness, a placement of what was the physical extension of what you saw as indeniable tenderment of what he was, currently strained in bloat.

This threw you, as if something had been firmly realized previously in denial.

"Honey, head up." Your fingers caressed under his lip. He threw his hand towards you, your finger swiping his lip while he gazed at you with with an execution of disgruntled lack of care.

"I'm fine. Honestly. This is an average night for my brand."

You knew he meant it. The words came out hesitant, but still tired with authenticity and honestly laden intention; "You're too good for this."

His dry eyes raised up; there was something that seemed as if they were interrupted in the narrative he was choosing to go down.

"Never heard that one before. Especially not in direct towards the last mess that anyone would expect in the expanse of the situation of me stumbling over my feet, either."

His eyes rolled slightly, sickliness seemingly overcoming his expression as a twist overcame his facial features. You felt the way he tremored under your hand; his body easing unfavorably under his sickliness. "Really-astounding."

His eyes turned to you; black and puffy laden, his stout hand press on your own. "You don't have to be here. If you have anything better you have to attend to. Just go do that. Don't make me hold you back." He waved his hand, lazily, reaching out to his pockets as he placed his hands on the side of what you assumed was meant to be his direction towards reaching for his keys. "I'll pay for your cab, whatever have you."

"No one is holding me back."

Your body eased down further to him, an Bojack gave a grumble of something mumbled in denial, arms rested on the side of his plush body. He let out a grunt, though it only seemed half present, much like his eyes, much like his intentions. "If anything, this is the first time I haven't felt held back."

He let out a raspy and drunken chuckle, jaded and black. A shaky breath left your lips, as if that would help calm you in the midst of your infatuation, or rather was it something heavier in the wake of how he was disassembling apart in front of you. As if you could ever be calm around him in general, but not in an idolized fashion; you simply felt as if you were more of yourself, and there was daily richness to be caught up on.

"I don't know if you entirely realize how lucky the both of us are-to have something that is the core of existence of something worthwhile, and is considered incredibly rare. It's unfathomable, how rare it is; and something that can't be-"

"Can't be earned." Bojack gave a sigh as he turned his head forward. "I get it."

He said it dryily, exhausted, low toned, and here was a softness to his voice that wasn't disrespectful, but rather tired, defeated. Bojack gave an abrupt chuckle, his turned forward as he continued to rock, as if to ease away some of the mental and emotional sickness.

Your lips pressed together as you looked him over, your hands caressed against his back as you heard the way he continued to breath heavily despite effort.

"Everyone is just a small void of chaos of easing into their own form of their small narrative, quirks, form and story; and no matter what they are, they're indiginfient and given mostly nothing, at the end of the day. That is the default. Everyone here-incredibly small, unfathomably finite. And they have no choice but to live and care for their entire world."

Something about your existence in its own right was focused and right when focused solely on loving him, and that was the definition of excitement, of something that was morally grounded and healing, not because you were focused on giving yourself that, but because you weren't, and rather for him.

It was about his happiness, his concerns, his needs-and how much it was presenting itself to you with such grace of invitation just from him being aimless in the way he was, just from his habit towards execution of expecting the worst of cases of not being looked after-and you, with just your response of taking him in for what he was and something inside of you responding in a way that felt as if you had been born to execute it.

To give him everything would be to give yourself everything. It was only a matter of doing it. It was his lack of acceptance that was the only strain towards the fact.

There was something inherently underwhelming about thought, or anything to do with creativity that captured simple and raw human existence in general. No matter how eloquent or even unique someone could have dressed up anything that reflected living, at the end of it all it was just that; living. That sheer amount of truth in that in and of itself would have been enough to take any zest you could have been encountered with anyway outside of your situation, but here was a particular island of encapsulated form of living that, in something that seemed not guaranteed constantly but was certainly true, was an embodiment of what living truly was; not because it was astounding, but because it wasn't, and rather was it real and raw.

He, in his entirety, was real.

"Let me take you to the table. I can make sure you at least have some comfortability while you sober up."

Your voice was the highest execution of tender. Bojack let out a grunted moan under your consideration, head turned ever slightly, though he was failing, all things considered, at being someone successfully disant.

"You see these women?" He indicated his head over to several noticeably tall, slender legged oman who were chuckling to one another through their passage by white murmuring. Occasionally did some of them turn their heads from the table of where they sat, joyous mumbling between them, slender hands drenched in the interactions of sweat and other men gracing their bodies. Bojack's lips curved up, bitter, knowing.

"Those joyous little secrets they're sharing between each other based off of men is the best entertainment they'll get all night. If we leave now, they'll just follow, and then I'll inevitably have to do something incredibly stupid like sleep with them to distract them before they post whatever half accurate observation they have about me. Would not recommend."

His eyes, drenched in execution in what seemed like a permeant look of unimpressive exhaustion and detachment of that of which was around him, graced his face; and then he settled for turning towards you as he looked you over. Your hand found his own as it rested on his stomach, the part of him that was embodied towards his messiness and insecurity, the physical execution of his tender and soft overall form of existence of his recklessness.

"Not around me."

Your voice broke slightly as you raised your hands onto the side of his hips, gradually allowing him to lean forward in the most suggestive and gentle fashion into your arms even as he contuiend to gave vague eases and breaths of his own uneven uncerinity. His head turned as his body naturally pressed on the side of your neck, easing his body onto the curves of what made up your torso as he fell backward against your hands with his body glided against your own was an admittance of defeat now to what was previously absent against the idea of benign cradled and treasured.

"This behavior isn't going to happen around me. I'm going to take care of you. That's what you deserve."

Your fingers, more delicate travelers of an attempted romanticism than they were any other possible extension of an end to their actions, pressed on his warm flesh that molded from his clothes as you heard him give a shaky, emotionally lathered uncertain breath as he eased against the curve of your neck."You sweet, precious thing."

He seemed too disoriented to respond in his usual jaded or invalidating response-more than likely an execution that kept him in a component of famarlity of what he was used to. There was no comeback, flickering away of his eyes away a bit of that silent confliction, or of any other way he could have ever reacted in the way that would have protected him from whatever strange and twisted shield he created to extend that fact that for him, forlorn isolation was preferred to being loved, even if it killed him.

"Nothing will chnage in life unless you make changes. Or did you already die and accpet that you're going to go through the stagance until your body catches up?"

He didn't fall into those usual inward executed stop signs; rather did another disgruntled grunt leave him as he gave an uneven mumbled raped breath, trouebeld eyes openeing, and then a soft undeerbeath of a sweat, His eyes were becoming clear with an increased exhaustion that gave away his true weak timid presentation.

"Let me take care of you. Just for one night. Existence is constantly overturning, and nothing is promised, especially when it comes emotions and relationships. "

His body fell against your curves, as if with a vague collapse of his body across yourself, and though it didn't seem as intended as much as he would have liked, you took it for what it was, and your thighs wrapped around his body; his eyes were flinched with the rest of his disgruntled body while his teeth poked as he continued to rock against the curves of your body.

"I'm sorry. It's just-"

"I'm not usually the type to not take advantage. No one knows or cares anything about who I am." Your arms continued to ease against his, and Bojack seemed to finally be having a bit of acceptance as he eased his body further beside your torso. "You don't have to worry about this night counting for anything, in general, unless you want. Except for having a night where someone cares for you and makes it a little bit easier, at least for a night."

His head turned up, eyes meeting your own expression; you felt the physical change in the ache of your chest at his eyes as they turned and met yours within their lost innocence of question.

"You sure you want to go down that road?"

Your lips curved down onto the diamond between his eyes, your hands busied with grazing and pressing against the coase mane of his hair. Fingers slendered their way through the space of his mane as he gazed at you with something that was too precious and glimmered to belong to a man with his repucaution.

"Believe me, there's nothing I would rather do. And I mean that."

"I think I do. For as much as I can, anyway. Like Diane said, or anyone, I'm sure, as much as I can mean it since this is the closest thing I can get to sincerity."

You couldn't hold his weight, but you still managed to hoist him up from his position of leaning around the curve of your body, and without another word Bojack gave a grunt as he eased himself forward, leaning his arm against your shoulders as he stumbled his way forward, swaying as he stepped forward and then gave a grumble as he stepped back.

You managed to wrap your arm just so around his body as your hands managed to find the spaces of his own arms, lifting him upward with a soft murmur that was meant to be softly encouraging. His body was limp, but he was just conscious enough that he gave you the slightest bit of grace by putting in some of his own effort, inching his body along the edge of your arms while his head lolled in various directions.

A woman walked by; her body was just as tightly dressed as the rest of what you had seen so far.

Her lips puckered as she walked past him, even taking to looking down at him with clear disapproval; you hoped he wouldn't notice, he was already gone and within his emotions too much for your comfort, but his head raised up, slumped like a lost boy, as his eyes, precious to you, snapped up at the lady and was rendered towards their usual capacity of superficiality of what he was used to in hardened judgment.

"I recognize that woman. We spent a good couple of nights smashing to keep ourselves occupied with what tonight would be if weren't making an effort."

That signature awkward grin that you had memorized, consisting of his large white teeth smashed together in an attempt at a profoundly large grin, crossed his features as he caught sight of the woman; she abruptly stopped as she met his gaze, her white high heels ceasing to tap by the floor as she head Bojack's low statement towards you-and, in kind, took notice as she turned her head over her shoulder to meet Bojack's gaze.

"Tanshe! Where have you been? Funny to see so many woman that I've been with in one night, right?""

The woman blinked her large eyes away from him as she turned her head downward, puckerd lips pressing together as she eased her eyes down to her purse. "I was told people like you wouldn't be here."

"Ah, ok. Some explanation might help. I get it. No one wants to have themselves noticed out of nowhere."

"You still talk like an idiot."

His eyes dimmed, but a fire of anger went in them just as quickly. "Well, it's just, since you saw me anyway, I was hoping to clear up any tension-"

"You don't talk to me. You don't associate with me. You don't know me. It's bad enough I had to see you a second time."

"-which there seems to be many of."

The woman turned her eyes towards you; the hard glint didn't leave her expression.

"This man used me for my body for everything he decided it was worth when I was younger."

"I did not!" Bojack's eyes widened and protruded as he looked her over.

"Said I would never make it once I started getting wrinkles and stopped returning my calls. In some ways, he was right." Her sharp eyes turned as she looked Bojack over. "With the way he looks, it might be the only thing he was right about."

"Ok. Ok. That would be said by someone like me. I can tell that it didn't age well. It may as well be printed on my tongue so I can pull it out and start spewing it at people first to get it over with instead of having to be reminded of it every time I see one of you."

"One of them." The woman raised a brow, and then chuckled as she shook her head and turned her expression to her purse. "Of course there would be plenty.."

"Don't try and twist this. That was ages ago. I'm trying to make it not weird now."

Bojack slurred a few more raspy words, slurred and careless in their execution as his eyes rolled up; whether his exasperation was at himself or the situation or the woman herself, it was a unmet mystery instead of a heart that could hope to be truly understood without the tension of anything unexplored.

Her eyes shot back to you. "I don't say this often, and I wish I had never met anyone that made me feel like I had to, but the world would be better off without people like that in it. Protect yourself, please. For the sake of having one less broken deseprate lost person stumbling the earth."

Bojakc fell silent, and his eyes remained in that dry and unreadable fashion as he turned his head to the woman while she rolled her shoulders and readjusted herself away from any connection she could have had with you, which she clearly associated ith shame if only for the fact that you were with him.

But you caught that mid second of a moment where his eyes squinted as that timid wound that only came from a good heart worried and concerned about being good crossed his expression; right before abrasive anger overcame him just as quickly.

"Shit, look at you go! Way to stick it to the big man. Should I call the celebration committee?"

The woman raised her heel, kicked his thigh, and the sudden hiss of pain Bojack made Bojack wince as he feltthe pain shoot through his body, followed by a deeper raspy swear that left his body as he leaned forward while one eye closed in response to the pain. His hands flew from under your own that rested on his stomach as he pressed his hand temperley on the side of his thigh where he had been kicked; the woman raised her head upward, as if accomplished, and walked her way down the hall, heels clicking with a certain energy with how she walked that seemed as if that in and of itself was an insult. After Bojack had collected himself, he snapped his eyes up to the woman, eyes winced and ears flown fully back.

"Real original! I'll be sure to keep that one jotted down in the notes the next time I have to deal with the unprecedented predicament that is mistreated woman responding to their idea of revenge!"

"Go to hell, Bojack."

She didn't turn, only kept walking without one pause in her step.

"Oh, you didn't hear? You're already there with me just by sleeping with me! Shit-" His words were cut off as his expression scrunched in pain, body flying forward as his hands kept gripped on his thigh, but even as the pain and helplessness snapped in his winced and insulted eyes, he turned his eyes down to his thigh and gave an abrupt swear, giving away how in pain he still was as his palm gripped beside his thigh.

"Please let it go. She's not worth it."

Your hands squeezed on his lovehandles. He was breathing heavily now, and it took a minute for his eyes to open again, as if it took a specific focus.

His head turned to where the wiman had disappeared. His eyes were squinted and there was a clear look of trembling absurdity on his face; a fire had been triggered.

"Ok, ok. Fine, fine. Fine. She wants to play that game? Two can tangle at being spiteful assoles, bobble head!"

"Bojack, don't."
"Bojack, don't?"

He turned, stumbling and swaying at the effort but still did he turn as he looked at you in question. "When has that ever worked in both in regards to anything you've heard about me in reality? For the record, never worked before, and it's not going to now."

His loathing had reached its full completion; something had been triggered that had previously been at least somewhat dormant. He whipped his body towards the direction where the woman had walked, his eyes disconnected and flinched as he swayed to the left and right and contuind to give out low and abrupt breaths. Something between aggression and detachment overcame his expression as he stumbled over his feet, tossing his arms in what was meant to be an attack towards what the emotions she had emitted within him had caused. The woman was gone, and as Bojack turned his eyes over the dim light of the party and the people taking lowly though the weed fog, most of the red eyed, high or udner the influence began to take over perception, there started to be an abrupt flame entering his eyes, and he was clearly turning the inward blame on himself for the trashy night.

"Yes, lets all get drunk and be rude and trashy to each other. That's the old toxic way!" He waved his arms aove his head, grumbling as he stumbled his way forward and over to the edge of the side of the gray wall. "Add another few gins and it'll be the conclusion of your goddamn life! At least you know what you're missing out on now! You're welcome!"

He tripped over his feet as an interruption overcame his speech with another sicky sickly breath as he stumbled his feet forward. A grunt left his lips as he abruptly began to fall backward again, tripping over his feet as arms began to fly back.

"Uh-oh"

He stumbled behind his feet as his body began to turn back to the ground again.

You got yourself up from watching him, heart racing as you reached out a hand to pull him back into yourself; or at least attempted to. Your hands only lightly grazed his clothes as he stumbled back onto the ground, giving another sly edge of a grunt as his body slammed against your arms. The sly looks coming from glimmering and slender eyes of onlookers of strippers and other corset dressed dancers let out a small murmur of talk between them, their smirk giving away their catty nature while they turned towards him for inspiration of the context of their conversation; mostly gossip, no doubt, if not for the fact that the mockery and heat in their eyes gave them away well enough, and some laughter emitted from makeup strewn lips as they turned their eyes down to their drinks and continued to talk with further mockery.

He just barely managed to catch himself as he threw his hand onto the dirty stripper ground under him, his plump body curling beside your touch as he round of body turned beside your hands, palms lifting forward as he winced while his body swayed under your touch.

You lifted up your hands to ease around his body for a second time as your arms threw around him; it was a secondary, almost animalistic reaction that felt far more of a need than it was of any choice. He let out another chuckled raspy grunt, clearly laced in layered loathing, as he allowed himself to be subsciously pressed against your body. But that was all it was; subconscious, and as his body leaned on the side of yours, that drunken and swayed look didn't leave his eyes; they were still lost in the direction the woman had walked, clearly hitting more of his own nerves than of anything she did to him.

"You're better than this. Let me catch you."

"I am not better than this. Here is the introduction to the day to day life and style of someone who knows they're not better than this. You find your place, you figure out how the world responds to you, and you react that way accordingly. No reason to make it more complicated than the way it is. Anything is either bullshit, or it will frustrate you."

"This is the only time I'll ever tell you this, for now, but-stop that. Don't talk like that."

"What else do you want? A cleaned up little slender helpless, timid cry for help like black hair and yellow dog over there?"

"No." You paused as you rolled your eyes up, pressing your lips together as you kept your hands beside Bojack while you fully kneeled down and eased yourself beside him again while he looked at you with that same wet since. "I don't want anything from you."

"Really. You don't want anything." His head turned away, giving a vague rasped chuckle as he did so. "That's the first headline of the night of something I'll never believe."

Something black churned within you. For all he could have said that could have hurt or thrown at you, you hadn't been expecting it to be something as simple as questioning your intentions, or the context of how he saw them. Nothing that you loved about him was an extension of anything to do with yourself; it all had to only do with him and how he felt. When it came to him, you loved outside of yourself, and that was a strange and odd freeing healing feeling that was the best one you had ever felt-and something alien enough that you were still trying to learn how to navigate it, if there was anything.

"Tell me what you need." Your hands caressed against his cheek; a sharp eyeroll and another drunken grunt left his expression as he felt the way your hand pressed on his skin while he turned his low and dim eyes back to yours. "Anything. Let me try to give it to you."

"You can start by not talking to me like I'm something that needs to be worked on." He gave you a wide flair of his eyes as he looked you over; there was an especially large weight to that jab. "I've had enough of that to last me a lifetime. Just because you find me tripping over my feet drunk doesn't mean that its suddenly an invitation that I want everything to be treated like a mess-or that I'm asking for help, or especially that I'm some inferiority that needs to be perfectly molded into whatever suits what other people want it to be."

Your hands hesitated as they pulled away an inch for half a moment, but you didn't allow that reaction to gauge for long. They found their place back on his clothes, palms grazing beside his stomach and his back while you looked him over, gentle and memorizing towards the fabric as you felt the warmth radiate from his skin even as he turned his eyes forward and gave another sickly breath, voice shuddering as he felt your hands ease beside him to reground him back to reality.

"I never wanted to do anything other than treat you as preciously as you've never been treated. I'm sorry if I can't speak your language at times."

"Exactly. You don't have to." His eyes turned over to you with a pout, eyes winced as he snapped the fire in his eyes over to you as he looked you over with his arm slashed out in front of him, eyes burning. "You don't have to feel like you found this profound purpose 'treating' me preciously. I promise you that I don't need whatever that originates from."

Your eyes snapped down, lips pressed together as the muscles on your face treamored. Your chin wanted to rest on the side of his shoulder, but the tension in your body was giving away everything that made that impossible, and your eyes turned up as you saw the way his muscles tensed for a moment under paralyzation as he processed the height of the wall built from your reaction.

"I'm sorry. I'm drunk. I don't know how to get when I feel like this. I'm trying. This has been a lot for me."

"I know."

"Not just tonight. In general."

His hand began to travel towards his pocket until his fingers felt the side of the fabric while he began to interlace his fingers on the inside of it, until finally with a few more grumbles and with his hands eased beside the clanging of the metal keys did he manage to pull them out. With the kets clumsily dangingly in the spaces of his fingertips did he turn as he handed it in your direction.

"Here, if you want the keys; you can take the car and get out of here. I'll call a cab and meet you at my place, we can switch off and you can go-" He winced as he turned his eyes to the side in timid uncertain thought. "Wherever it is you need to go."

"That's the last thing I want."

He snapped his eyes up to you with a flair. "Come on. What else are you going to do?"

"I'm not leaving unless I know you'll be alright-and maybe not even then."

The clear intention that had taken Bojack for a moment gradually began to settle, and he mumbled, body shivering under your touch as his eyes lowered as he placed the keys back into his pocket.

"Do what you want." He glared as he raised his eyes up to you with pointed to you with a jot. "But I am not doing this back and forth thing all night."

"Good. Because neither am I."

Your body shouldered against the side of his body as you felt him lean onto yours further. It was an awkward, comical position, being surrounded by the extent of the crowd that the both of you couldn't have been more detached from; of the laughter and the general gazes that came from the slender woman that seemed like they were literal allures of everything that tempted Bojack's anger and disappointment; or would, when he was finally out of the drunken episode of the blurred reality of alcohol.

For the time being, he seemed too be out of it to even have that response, and you found that a good thing for now.

"Look, if nothing else, I think the best way to go about pain or any emotion or belief is to try and find some acceptance of it and the way things are. We can both find that, for now. Nothing is keeping from a slightly fresher perspective."

Your hands eased across Bojack's hips as he continued to give an abrupt breath, and his air seemed even more tender and helpless now as his body curled beside your arms as his ears lowered, expression closed as he turned into you, giving helpless breaths that gave away his discomfort.

Your hands grazed on the side of his arms, feeling the fabrication of his clothes responding to your touch. The muscles on his face treamored in troublement. You felt him exude towards a defeat that seemed as if it had been begging to be met as he shouldered under your touch, melting further back into your palms as his ears twitched and pressed against the side of your hands, the round of his plush body turning into your embrace as he continued to let out trouebeld breaths.

He wasn't fighting; rather did it seemed that whatever lack of permission he had been forcing away from himself before was now starting to fall into an acceptance of that of what he actually was verses what he had desperately tried to exude, or wanted to believe. It would have been easier if he was that person; simple, empty, familiar, and what you felt for him not a wonderment but another simple stagance.

His abrasive fight he had consisted of inside his body previously was now full of nothing except for a tired defeat of acceptance, and there was that preciousness starting to flow from his essence and into the general details of his physical body; the lowering of his eyes, the black puffiness of his eyes, the defeat in his expression as he body lowered against the side of your arms.

A sickly grunt left his lips as your arms succeeded for the second time that night in pressing yourself around his body, easing against the edge of your own.

"At least it was a bad day." Bojack gave a gruff breath of his lips beside your chest as he curled beside your chest. "At least there was something that ever occurred to constitute it as a day at all. To even give it any meaning. Even bad." A soft breath left his lips, a soft nuance of humor and exhaustion as his snout eased beside your chest. "I haven't been able to do even that for a long time."

Your nose grazed on his shoulder as you inched away the dirty sweater and clothes on his body that were spoiled in stains of his previous impulsive acts that had happened and would continue to happen time and time again. The flesh that made up the delicacy of his own body was nothing less than the entrance of what you had already known what he was to you to begin with; an irreparable soft and precious thing. You could have enjoyed the tenderness for everything it was in and of itself' but this wasn't about you, and that wasn't where your joy came from; the fulfillment of your own needs was far from what you cared about in this moment, and previously your days empty with concerning yourself with much of the same. What was of reward, what felt like utmost importance, was the desire to give him what he needed.

"Let me take care of you."

Announce crossed over even the vague defeat against Bojack's expression, and he closed his eyes, waving his hand beside you.

"No. That's ok."

"Please."

Your fingertip rested against his mane as it entangled up against the black of his mane, and though that annoyance was till flashed across his expression, he turned as he raised his eyes up to meet yours, teeth poked, expression worn and undone with emotion as he met your eyes.

"You lost, sweet thing. I'll do anything to make this better for you."

He only breathed out something exhausted as he turned his tender eyes down, ears lowering as he did so as he gave a breath and a tremor of the tension of his expression.

Your head tilted until you were only a few inches away from his eyesight; he could look over at you now if he wanted to. He did-though it seemed more like a last resort of misery more so than anything else. His eyes were squinted and puffy as he lifted his eyes and squinted at you, head still swaying within inch to inch of his movement.

"Taking care of me," he repeated. "That's what you think is going to happen?"

Your hands paused in their caressing of his mane."If you let it."

"You can't take care of me. Sounds like someone that doesn't know what they're talking about would say."

"Bojack."

"It's very sweet. But no matter what different paths we had, I think we can both agree that it's far more complicated than that."

His hands gripped on the side of his sweater, blinking down at it as his palms gripped beside the clothes. "Anyone who wants to try to take care of this either doesn't have a good perception of reality, dosen't understand what they're getting into, or they see something different for what it is and are probably carrying some lost cause themselves." His eyebrows snapped up as he looked you over. "Which one do you want to take?"

There was more interrupted laughter that came from the slender corset of the dolphins and other strippers in the corner; though it wasn't clear if it was direct at Bojack, ou caught the flash of emotion and the intensity of it.

Your head turned up, and you kept your hands firmly pressed on the side of his shoulder. He was sharp and aware enough to seem to know what was going on around him, and the hard glint in his eyes was giving away towards the idea of the general sharingan acknowledgement that was in his air of the sheer amount of idiocy he was perceived as.

"This way." Your eyes turned down as you began to raise yourself up from where you were huddled beside him, and his eyes followed yours as he saw you get yourself up.

"What? Where?" His eyes turned up as you gripped your hand around his palms while your hands ghosted down from his back, easing him upward. He grunted and flinched, but his body gradually untangled from the form of yours as he was raised into a standing position, swaying as he looked you over with a wince. "I meant what I said about you going back to my place on your own. I'll call someone to pick you up, since you can't drive, or-"

The loud and bright laughter of began to raise into the air, and Bojack's eyes winded, then lowered into dry exasperation as he turned his eyes and gestured over to where he was now gripping Diane's hands, talking to her with a bright colorful tone as she already seemed to have a new brightness glimmered in her eyes in a way you hadn't managed even halfway with Bojack.

"-This idiot can take you home with his wife. Honestly, they're far better company than I am, so you're better off."

You didn't allow his words to get to you; that was the irony of it all; you understood and felt like there was a permanent warmth to what he said for as long as it came from matter how negative or abrasive, there was an interruption to his words that was cutting into your own desire of faith of the harmony that could exist.

You had found him, in whatever way you had been looking for in the wrong corners of the world previously, and now that you had you refused to allow the mistreatment of what he had been spoonfed in the past to control what you wanted to give him. Nothing would interrupt the narrative of that soft pursuit that led to him without understanding or even conception of comprehension; there was only to flow and follow.

"There's two ways that people die. One is where their physical bodies die-and the other is when any compaccy for true and genuine love, family, and community is taken away for the rest of their lives."

He raised a brow as he looked you over, body swaying with his body turned forward in the way someone with a lack of focus or confidence would-foggy headed and distant.

"Yeah?"

"I don't know if this is anything. I don't know if this is just a desperate grip for hope that is worthless delusion again, or nothing at all, the same way I am nothing; but I would like to think that we can both give ourselves relief for awhile with at least the pretend nature of it."

"You sure?" His eyes eased up as he looked you over. "I guess there's only so low you can go before you either die or things can't get any worse." His dry eyes turned to the crowd, distant, dim as he swayed. "That's one way to go about looking at limitations."

His body was swaying, but he was up now- with his hair erratically thrown in several directions and all, mixed with the deep bags under the skin of his eyes. Your fingers gripped firmly against the spaces of his fleshy palms while you started to walk him through the surremeanlnt of the crowd, the white talk murmuring of the general feeling of the business of each given party, the general flow of the business of the crowd. You shouldered your way through them, only confident in Bojack following you through the clumsy grunts and the tripping of his feat and the warmth of his palm.

After shouldering your way through the rest of the crowd, you made it to the front of the purple laden illuminated door that led back over to the space of the dance section of the party.

Bojack stumbled as he continued to follow you, awkward grunt leaving his lips as he shouldered his way through the crowd. Occasionally did you hear his response to the hard eyes and disgruntled words thrown towards him while they looked over their shoulders, comments laced in a clear deep annoyance as they snapped over towards the both of your movements as you both made your way through the crowd.

"Get off, man."

"Sorry." Bojack's tone was low, almost apologteic, shamed as he contuind to follow you through the woman and men that at least half had some idea or repatuion towards him. His ears lowered as he followed you through the crows."Coming through."

"Professional escort going on, evidently."

"Hey, me too." Bojack turned his head over his shoulder while he offered the last member of the party a glare of his eyes. " I'm drunk on my ass, you think I know what's going on?"

"Sh. Try to stay focused on feeling sober. When we get home, we'll worry about the drunk part. I know you can. You just did it for me."

Your fingers gripped against his palm, turing back to where Bojack was swaying, leaning forward and pressing your palm on his cheeks. He gave another drunken grumble, briefly and sharply, though it hardly touched the fog in his eyes that gave away aimlessness.

"I'll get right on that. You know why people get drunk the majority of the time? Because they want to forget that there's certain emotions they don't want to feel-or they're allowing themselves to feel the emotions they've been putting off the whole time. Without that, you're missing the point of why people get drunk. Which I am."

"Hey, if you're going to have some great past drunk celebration, at least keep it quiet, ok?"

Diane's voice was mumbling from behind the both of you; Bojack's large grin turned into a sharp wozziness as he turned his head around, frowning with one eyebrow lowered.

and Diane were walking from behind, her body and arm slung over her husband's shoulders as she stumbled through the crowd, one eye lifted as the other was closed while her feet were walking through the crowd. One arm was lazily slung on the side of 's while the other was helplessly slung to the side as it swung by her body. 's eyes looked up between the both of you switch a look of helplessness, stumbling by her side all the while as he kept one yellow hand pressed on her torso.

"Oh, great." Bojack's eased into that dry lack of impression again. "Now here comes the Starbucks celebration couple themed committee."

Bojack let out a raspy breath as he walked past you-or tried to, but he was abruptly stopped by the side of your hand pressing on his wrist. It wasn't enough to get him to stop, but it was enough for him to stumble slightly as he made his way to the door, and though he let out another grunt and grumble form his breath, he stumbled back, and gave a slight sound that suggested defeat as his back leaned beside your arms.

His fingertips interlocked against the spaces of your hands in subconscious response to your hand. The door on the other end of the dnce party that was now in your reach had led to the outside; or so you had thought, but rather than being met by the cool breeze of the outside, there was only another purple lit room that was even smaller and most enclosed than the other space. There was nothing except for a few stables, messy drinks slapped onto them, and several strippers, most of them dolphins, sitting around them.

"Whoa." Bojack's eyes glimmered up as a small smile curved on his expression. "Whoa-oh!"

Their eyes looked up as they fluttered through their own whimsical and more than likely catty conversations. Bojack let out something between a drunken moan and a whistle as he raised his hands up.

"Eyy-" Bojack gave an abrupt, drunken and shaky breath as he snapped his head over his shoulder, tripping over his feet as he looked over to where some of the woman had fluttered their own slim eyes up and over to Bojack. You tried to speak his name to keep him beside you and focused, but he only let out a cocky grumble and breath as he tripped over his feet while his body swayed beside your arm while he turned his head and looked between the woman. "What's up with all these partying low energy spaces and the shush conversaitons? What are you all, a bunch of losers? Not when Bojack is in the house, am I right?"

One of the dolphin woman lifted her head up, eyes lowering in welcome, though slightly edged with a warning, as she smirked. "It's about time you showed up. We were waiting for a big name to come along."

"Big name! There we go! That's it!"

He cackled, eyes squinted into something that suggested a timid surprise and a glint of cocky teasing, but he, as always, played along as he stumbled over to her, despite you saying his name to try and pull him back to you, and you knew that as much as you wanted to be, you were in no place to keep him from going over to the woman. You shrunk into yourself as your body curled in while your hands pressed beside your arms, taking a breath to try and calm your concern as your expression furrowed while-but you tried to keep yourself as controlled as you could as you watched him stumble over to the woman.

"Shit. Where is he going?" Diane's eyes lowered, dry, as she turned her head to where Bojack was stumbling over his feet to where the slender dolphin woman turned as she looked him over; her body slender teased by a cheetah woman's who's body was just as deeply curved and her eyes slitted in judgment as she looked Bojack over, lips raised in a silent amusement.

"Ah. Probably just to see more wonderful woman that I'm sure he's had some incredibly bonding with before. You know he's always been good at making them all feel comfortable!"
's tongue eased out as his eyes glisnted, and Diane gave a small drunken smirk as she was pulled into him.

Bojack lazily took to wrapping his arm around the woman's shoulder, his bottom eyes wincing as he swayed beside her while pulling her in, small raise of his lip turned forward. The dolphin woman gave a slight laugh as she was pulled into Bojack's arm, she body slenderly eased beside his embrace as he pulled her inward.

"I knew you dolphin woman had good taste. What else would keep you all from being able to stay under sea, huh? It's a lot quieter down there. At least all the bullshit is a little bit more muted. That must be nice, right?""

His eyes were rolling back in his teasing playfully, flirtatiously as he continued to sway beside his feet, and his smile was raised up in a way that was genuinely charming and inviting towards his charmatsic teasing. There was a tragic charm of grace to the way he was slurring his words and teasing, and the woman both seemed apt to buy into it.

He pointed at her chest, and there was a slight curve of a grin that suggested some disgust or detachment from her end that showed that her charm towards Bojack was detached and superficial towards s, but at least it was masked and controlled. She placed her slender silver hand on the side of his, pulling it away with still that same suggestive smirk of wanting a further use.

"We need some promotion." The woman's eyes were glinted with a red teasing as she looked him over. "Think you could help us out?"

"Promotion?" Bojack gave a glint of his eyes as his bttom eyes winced, chucking as he looekd her over with that boyish light in his eyes as he gave a shrug. The teasing look in the woman's eye instantly dimmed. "What do I look like, I'm on some wack job call? C'mon, you should know the only thing I'm trying to do here is drink."

The dolphin stripper's eyes furrowed in a frown, and already did she begin to ease herself away from where she was grazed across Bojack's body as she showed her true disgust, though it seemed lost on Bojack as he threw his arm away from her. He snapped his head lazily towards the other tightly dressed corset strippers as he stumbled towards them, raising up his hands in what seemed like a detached party gesture.

"Heyyy! Ladies! These are my party goers! That's what I'm talking about!" His hands wrapped around the slender curves of two of the female woman, who took it well enough, as he offered them both a sloppily grin. "You girls havin' a good time?"

You rushed your way towards his side, though it seemed impossible, given his talent at hiding himself amongst as many female bodies for his own allured distraction as possible. Still, your arm snaked through the curves of the two particularly tall and especially dressed up women Bojack was now occupied with. Your hand squeezed around the side of the edge of his own unmistakable warm palm that pressed on the inside of yours before he could occupy his touch with the woman.

"Whoa-hey. Hey." Slight tension took his frown as he turned and snapped his head towards your fingers. "You want a part of this? Wait in the back of the line. We can all have a good time tonight, but we need it organized." He smirked as he shouldered the right of the woman, who was dressed in a red gown, her lips puckered as she looked over Bojack with a vague amused pucker of her lips. "Right, ladies?"

The woman puckered her lip over further as she looked Bojack over, giving a vague shrug as she did so, and it was clear that she was measuring down his worth for everything it was. Your fingertips eased tighter beside Bojack's palm, pulling him inward as much as you were able, though he seemed determined-but worse than that, entirely and unfunctionally drunk.

His eyes widened and his body shuttered forward slightly; he gripped on hand on his stomach as he fell forward, eyes rolling back. The woman's eyes widened as she gazed at him while Bojack gave a slight abrupt grunt as his body turned forward as much as he was able was he grdually eased himself back up as much as he was able from where he had fallen forward, bosdy swaying as he did so while he looked between them.

"Bojack." You rushed your way beside him again, your eyes turning as you looked between the woman, though you hardly knew what to do now to rebuild the need to help him back to his car. The woman were already adding onto the humiliation, the woman in front of Bojack stepping back as she gave a slight chuckle of her lip, puckering up her expression as she turned her head to her companion. If there was any shame for them looking over Bojack like he was the extension of some form of their own satisfied stepping stone towards what they wanted, and their lack of interest if not had, it was currently fully present in their eyes now.

"Goddammit; these stupid party based drinks want to throttle us for everything I'm worth. Which, admittedly, is hardly anything. Especially now."

A grunt of disgust came from one of the dolphin women; she inched backward just enough for Bojack to manage a shaky grin while his eyes turned to her.

"Hey, it's all just talk. Nothing serious about it. I can still give you a good time. Or you can give me one. Either one. Depending on what you could give me, I may admittedly prefer the latter."

"Excuse me." You shouldered your way through the rest of the people that were standing around Bojack as they talked in their low talk and white muttering of theri senseless noise. It didn't matter how justsfied it was or wasn't when it came to someone losing their will to live, way, or life; if there was no one who cared or knew enough to care, they were as good as dead, and Bojack, in all of his indifference, profound depth and complexity of what you had taken in that had already marked you for your depth, you ceritnly knew he was the case of one of the countless aimless.

You pressed your body against his as you kneeled down enough to be at his level; all it took was a pull against his arm, and you began to pull him outward from the rest of the enclosed space. Bojack's eyes were wincing in that pathetic timid pant as he raised his body upward, stumbling as he fet your hand ease across his arm while you began to rush him through the blur of the cackling crowd.

"Look at you go." Bojack's voice was somber, less teasing and boyish as he tripped over his feet as he continued to follow you through the crowd, stout body lowered as your hand kept on his back and by his stomach again while the chuckling of the woman fell behind the noise.

"Digging yourself into some party spaces like a real loonie. Following the likes of me around. If you thought you were having a weird time before, just wait until you know what it feels like to party with this wreck."

"I was trying to get you back to your car." Bojack chuckled messily as he began to ease himself down beside the cushion that you eased him onto, his body turned back as he swayed while your fingertip ease forward and threaded under some of the left over alcohol that was dripping from his lip.

"Yeah?" He thrusted his swaying head forward, eyebrows raised. "How'd that work out?"

"I was hoping you would make it easier."

"Easier? Sure." He waved his hand drunkenly in front of him. "No more of that. Not now. No more of that sad stumbling drunk crap. I came here to feel awesome and to have a good time."

"You're sick."

"Sick?" Both of his arms were lazily slung back, and his sickly hooded eyes turned as he looked you over, eyes wincing as he swayed his head lazily forward. "I'm not sick." HIs arms waved in front of him lazily as his eyes, still tinted with that intelligence, turned around and over the crowd as that cocky raise of his lip turned up. "Sick of tyring to figure out how to make this night memorable, maybe."

One eye of his was closed and the stout of his legs was gradually turning back lazily to the chair as he let loose and gave him, even as he didn't want to. His head lolled back as it pressed onto your shoulder, eyes squinted as his body was slammed around the edge of your hands.

"Honey. Sweetheart."

Your hand ran through his mane as he turned and raised his eyes at you; there was a careless twist on his expression as his eyes squinted while he turned and looked up at you, smile twisted into a humorless and careless grin.

"You look ridiculously double edged. Did you always do that?"

A cackle left one of the strippers; your eyes turned up as you saw their squinted look of clear disapproval, and, clearly, their idea of what was pathetic.

"I'm taking him, don't worry. You can move on." You said it sternly, bluntly, as your eyes turned as you looked them over. The stripper woman posed as they looked you over with a vague end of disgust, then turned as they talked to one another lowly while they continued to walk their way through the crowd, but not without their heads turned back and their palms turned against the middle part of their backs as they were drenched in clear mocking, turning their eyes to yourself and Bojck before they began to turn back into the crowd.

Bojack let out another winded chuckle, as if he had been punched. "Who said anything about taking anyone? I'm here to get cuddly with some strippers on the house." The druken, distant ass look in his eyes sombered as he look at you with a hard, pointed look. "And I mean that. There's no point in getting this wasted for the countless time unless it pays off with some relief. Believe me."

His voice reached its deepest tone, melding in his with his messy chuckling that sounded like the most beautiful allure in its maslcuine execution, but distant in the way it had any coherent direction that made it feel wretching; and more than that, completely devoid of any genuine sense of respect towards himself, or anything that happened to him at all. Although you knew that the night was manageable and that, as an individual, you had faced and would face far more unforgiving ones, there was just as well the idea that you could feel your strength and endurance for him and yourself chipping away into a gradual lack of sanity or focus; and if anyone knew that aimless wretched lost feeling, far from human, it was yourself. No matter the attempt of the perspective and the sense of control over it, you knew you could only keep the sense of self and home he gave you for so long with this attitude.

"Bojack."

"Yeah." His eyes turned up, dry and distant as he looked you over, and eyelids still cynical and heavy.

"I don't know if I feel like I found a profound meaning that is saving me too because I decided to find it in you, or if it's because of something I was meant to do, or something inbetween of the effort of myself and something that was meant to be. But let's just go somewhere to sit, ok? Can we do that?"

Your fingers pressed on the side of his cheeks, a soft circular caress, as if that would help manners-as if that would be able to reach into the part of him that executed and fought off any coherent sense of allowance of warmth, desperately wanted but horribly left and ignored.

"Hey-you can let me go."

His hand swatted out, messily and missing its mark, but still hitting on yours as your hand snatched away.

"I don't need to be walked to a certain area, or closely looked after, or get affected or drastically led by any of the above. Not right now." He raised a brow, cockily, as he turned to the strippers. "Am I speaking your language right ladies? Huh?"

Your hand fell away from caressing his hips as they instead turned to his shoulders; he still wasn't quite upright, but was just slouched enough that it executed his clear uncomfortability and lack of care towards himself. It wasn't anger you felt; that would have suggested an extent of a lack of love or your own possession and attachment of the idea of how you felt things should have gone, but rather was it a strange suffocated feeling; but even with that, in an odd way, did it feel as if it was encased in warmth; even unpleasant situations were turned drastically into something spiritual when it concerned him.

His laughs were met by a wince of an interruption as you began to curl your arms further beside his hips. He turned as he looked over at you, eyes swayed and wincing.
"Oh, here we go. What's up with you? You got that look in your eyes. You got some advice coming?"

Your arms embraced firmly on his body; not enough to give him discomfort, if anything, it seemed more like a desperate embrace onto him of that of what he was, and that, for tonight, anyway, you had saved it. He let out a grunt as one eye squinted.

"Little tight."

"Do you even care what happens to you tonight?"

His eyes rolled, as much as they were able to. "Oh, here comes the 'gotcha' therapist." His arms crossed, sitting on top of your arms,expressing furrowed as he looked you over with a wince.

"Are you going to start telling me about how I should party less, remind me of all the reasons why I do this to begin with and why I'm better off hiding in the back at any given party?"

Your lips curved up; it was an exhausted and amused grin. Your eyes turned against him gently, and you took to curling one thumb beside his cheek, even as he eased his eyes away from you in a dry, bewildered fashion.
"I don't know what kind of twist you have in your brain to come up with the misconceptions that you do when all I want is to love you, sweetheart."

Something glinted in his puffy eyes and it almost looked like there was an apology in it, and in the timid nature it was more for himself than you-and yet, that was what you wanted.

"That's a drastically confusing concept I'll save for another time."

"Save anything you want. What I don't want is for you to go stumbling around on your feet if there's somewhere you can land; and I want to be that for you."

His eyes, trembling in a strange broken and torn up innocence, looked between yours. Your hands settled on the spaces of his hands as you fingers found his, squeezing against them.

"Why?"

You opened your mouth to respond-or intended to. The curved dolphin that broke through the conversation made your statement drastically sliced into; you could hear her stepping on her high heels as she came from behind.

"Is this what the average Hollywood visitor celebrity party looks like? Worst part is that it's one of the best parties, I've been told; and this is what came out of it. This is the show stopper." The dolphin woman smirked as her fingertips grazed on the cigarette. Her eyes lowered in disapproval as your head turned over your shoulder, looking over to the dolphin woman's eyes as she turned and looked you over; her eyes were red, empty and mocking."New lows."

For whatever admitted gentleness and acceptance Bojack had allowed for you a second before, it was gone as a glint of that same annoyance spurted in his eyes. His fragility of character was too easily turned over by the chaos of how he was perceived from others-and there was no stability of himself to keep it upright. He snapped his head away from yours as he instead turned to the dolphins, body swaying, eyes aggressive, attempt of defense on his expression, though, as always, it was met with a tide of a twisted delusional defeat that came along with hs beiwdered intentions of what he wanted and his sickly drunk self.

"You do not have to rope her into this. She has nothing to do with whatever race we have going on here to distract ourselves from the fact that we're not happy with the stagnace of existence that this woman is far better at than any of us ever could be."

"Honey, don't get caught up in this." You heard the dolphin chuckle, her thin blue legs curved and jutted up by her pink high heels, and your body turned as you looked Bojack over as his eyebrows raised as his expression turned over you as you made your way to him, though you kept yourself a couple of inches back, if only to give him space; and there was a sense of insult that you were allowed to be with him with that judgemental glint in the dolphin woman's eyes. "Let me take you somewhere to hold you."

"Ok, sure. Because logic and reason has always been the best way to go about solving anything in Hollywood parties. Best logic there is. Thanks for the straightforward logical peptalk."

"Whoa-oh!" The dolphin woman chuckled, her eyes lowering as she looked you over with cocky spite as she took another drag of her stick. You stepped back, uncertain as to how to respond; if anything. "That was more of what I was expecting with what's going on here."

"If anything doesn't lead to some genuine human connection, at the end of the day it's a waste of time and a distraction of a meaningless life. I was to show Bojack that. He doesn't have to concern himself with any of this. Or be anything other what he already is. It's the hardest thing to accept in this world-but true."

The dolphin woman's eyes, drenched in lipstick and smeared across her mouth, raised up a smirk as she looked you over while her eyes turned aross yours. Her expressions as far more judgemental than it was of anything of admriaiton.

"Cute."

Bojack's response was unreadable; he let out a messy uneven grumble as he tripped forward. Exasperation was executed onto his every action, from the puffy glint of his eyes to the stumbling of his feet. He turned his head towards the crowd of women, directing his spite like a straightforward weapon; as if that would help his case at all.

"Leave her alone." Bojack's voice was still slurred and distant, but there was something in his voice now that spoke as if it was directing some unspoken respect towards you, even as it was detached and unaccepting of what you knew he was emotionally inellignt enough to pick up on.

The dolphin chuckled, though it was full of a certain spite instead of whatever release Bojack was looking for. Your hands grazed on the side of his shoulder again as you started to pull him back- just enough so that he wouldn't notice in his drunken swaying, ensuring that there was some sense of separating yourself from any idea of controlling him, though you far from had any actual intention of leaving him alone, no matter how many hurtful thralls he tried to throw for the sake of what was comfortable to him, no matter how painful to avoid: the undeniable allure of th softness of familiarity.

"Hey, hey-someone's pulling me! We got a puller! Beep dot dot! Police please! Phone call!"

His arms twisted against the side of your hands, had turned upward while he stumbled behind and onto your feet.

"Bojack, you're clearly drunk. I want you to take some time to calm down, not to make this worse.

"Uh-duh." Bojack's eyes widned as his expression flared while he looked over over. His and rasid into a getsure as he pointed to you. "By the way, the speech you made was ture, but not all of us want to be roped into something we don't feel like we know how to respond to. It dosen't work. I understand that you think that finding me and loving me is this sign for your permanent purpose, but I don't know if I can give you that. And I now you know that."

You felt something drop in your stomtahc. "Why not?"

A flash came from a camera, and it blinded you temporary. Bojack let out a grunt that came across as broken and disgruntled as hish head snapped in disorientation, snapping his hand in front of him, yourself following suite. The dolphin woman laughed as she turned her pink eyeberry colored eyelids back to the phone just as you blinekd frantically to come back to yourself as you snapped your head over to her, a smirk curved on her lips.

"What in the hell was that?"

Boajck's arms awkwardly spilled out from your hands and they slammed on his face, hiding his eyes under the bright light and poking through the spaces of her fingertips as he tried to collect whatever senses he could. His ears flew back entirely as hsi eyes snapped over to where the dolphin woman had her phone placed between blue fingertips, eased across the phone as she began to tap fracntially. Bojack's eyes winced further as he looked her over, helpless flair in his eyes.

"God-the lights! I knew everyone came out just to destroy me and dick me over!"

"Well, it didn't take you too long to fall apart, did it, Horseman?"

"What insinuated that I was ever grounded to begin with? Is this satisfying for you? You like to take anything that distracts you from your jaded and sharp corset and look at something that isn't for whatever two seconds of satisfaction it gives you?"

Your hands pressed on the side of his arms, caressing down his body, heavily breathing, until they rested on his hips. Talk seemed like it was out of the question, so you settled for the extent of pulling him into your embrace as you focused on the rhythm of pulling him back without feeling like you were controlling him.

If there was anything he wanted, it was to be looked after, and dared you think-loved. But more than that, the best tool you could grant him was the simple act of allowing him to know what it felt like to stand on his own two feet; soemthing he had always done, but it had only ever been done in a force of action that left little room for any coherent sense of stability or of grace. You wanted him to have both, in any way it could be granted.

You began to collect him back into your hands as much as either of you were able, though he seemed determined, even if only subconsciously, to remain a disoriented and pulled apart mess, as if that was the greatest comfort that could be given to him. As his ears lowered and his hands raised up in a desperate disgust and a pity in his eyes, your ache for him and to love him overcame any other forms of hesitancy.

"Why's the room moving?" Bojack snapped his head up and over to the grey roof, letting out a grumble as he did so as his body swayed by your palms. His perception of reality was still incredibly disoritnted, eyes turning through the crowd. The dolphin woman's smirk was satificed, and she began to surface back into the blur of the crowd."Did you girls do something to your bodies?"

"Bojack. Sweetheart. This is ridiculous."

"You're telling me. They have about twenty different strippers in this room,and one of them are helping me with this hangover."

You almost could have laughed. It was one born of the emotional absurdity of the layers of emotion between the two of you that was the brink of chaos, yet it transcended and formed the most coherent peace-if only you could keep the chaos of him by you.

"Would you sit with me already?"

He raised his eyebrows, as much as his functionality would allow, still swaying with that frown on his features, that heavy timid sadness that only gave away to someone that felt as if it was a pain to not love.

"Maybe. But don't think it's not because I'm drunk, or because I'm sad or lonely or need to be held, or whatever other sappy shit Diane was on."

"Deal." Softly was the word spoken, straightforward, acknwodliening, but more than that; content. Bojack's eyes lit up, the complicated conflict in them as present as always.

"You know, the best way to be able to cope with pain is to accept it. To see it as something not to be dreaded, but rather simply as it is, the same way you simply are, and to let the two things come together to create a harmony, rather than a fight."

"Really." Bojack's body was turning as he allowed himself to be lead by your palms and over to the grey couch, his feet tripping over himself, but for all of his detached gleam in his eyes, the emotional charamstic side of him seemed to be picking up on what you were saying.

"I think we'll both need to be able to hold onto that philosophy. Not just tonight, or any result that comes night, or any day before that."

"I know." Bojack's voice was somber as his body kept by you. "Me, too."

There was a bit of despair in his eyes-one of which gave away the reason why he drank himself to death that seemed if, for whatever suffering that he was going through, it pushed him onto the absolute of wanting to resist whatever he felt you would give him that both encapsulated him and, clearly, gave him an unfavorable unpleasant emotion all at the same time.

He was on the brink of any kind of success to resistance to surrendering he could have felt that night; that cliche, typical surrendering people did, but there was nothing cliche about him, for you that felt as if you were tasting an ache of golden reparability for the first time.

And anyway, originality, sanity, even even mindedness mattered so little in the wake of the details of the bags under his lost eyes, the sleep deprived nature of his squinted expression, the fragility of his insecurity executing itself to the forefront. It was an alluring wake of desire, trembling of want that was asked for him without knowing, and begging towards you without you being able to resist the compelling of it. The more depthful, truthful, and unique something was, the less likely it was acknowledge or even brought into existence in the first place; burned out and forgotten beyond recall while trampled over the repetition of much of the same before.

Your hands patted on the side of his cheeks, and his eyes squinted, though that timid look didn't leave his lost nature.

"Come on, sweetheart. There's a booth." Your hands caressed asint his arms as you looked him over, giving a breath for a reset. "If you won't come with me and out of here, then we can at least do that. Alright?"

A slight flitter of thought eased across Bojack's eyes, and then he gave a simple mutter, complimented by his melancholic grace as he took you in, of, "Ok."

Matter of factly, prompt and upright was the word spoken. He placed one foot in front of him, eyes widened, then stumbled, tripped as he gripped his hand onto your arm. "One foot in front of the other. Harder than it seems."

"You don't have to walk." Your arms pressed on the side of his shoulder. He mumbled, clearly meaning for some witty defense, but his sickliness prevented any coherent success of the fact.

"You're the one walking. I'll follow that. Straightforward, nice and easy. Singular enough. Can do that. More walking, let's go."

As you helped him stumbled to the booth, you felt a question of whether or not this would only harm him or yourself in the long run; it seems like act like the endurance of devotion you were giving him, not from any direct cause, but rather, like with most things that gave life coherent hope and meaning, you fell naturally into because there was an inherent desire to do what you could from him that you hadn't been able to resist-and you wondered if it would end worse than from when you had found one another.

But there was something so bleeding and desperate in him that you knew, more likely, any bad would bellow over if given the chance to feel anything other than that comfort of familiarity-even when terrible. You dared to believe that much, even after everything terrible you knew about existence; even after a lifetime of knowing like was a string of indifferent bad, and any good was only whatever small strength someone had to pull outside of themselves.

"Ok. Ok. Here's the table. Nice and round, here we go." His raspy heaviness exceeded towards a messily, drunken chuckle as he slammed his body onto the cushion, snout thrown back while you inched into the booth and leaned against him while looking him over with worry. Mouth hung open while his arms were slung to the side, head snapped and craned backward as you inched by the side of a stomach that should have been an execution for shame for his lack of hope or control; instead, it was a soft invitation of that ache of his emotional and physical allure that found the resting of your hands against his waist something that felt as if it was made to go together.

"You should try this more. This whole carrying drunks thing. You're decent at it. No, wait-Incredible. You're incredible. There-it's stated! Thrown out into the area!"

He slammed his fist on the table; the pressure clattered from the glasses. Several faces turned; you responded by tracing your hand on his cheek as he turned his sculpted face, at odds with his plush and lazily slouched body, over to you. His eyes twitched, and he swayed while his cheeks pressed around the gentle sway of your hand, trying your best to keep him centered while his eyes twitched around the edge of his black puffy laden vision.

You took a breath; he was grown, and, even if it felt against whatever spiritual intuition you had, you knew you had to allow him whatever space or desire he wanted.

"If you want me to leave, I will. I'll find someone else to drive you home; or I'll drive you home, that would be preferable. I'll take you to your place, you can do or say whatever you want, and I'll catch a ride."

He stared at you for what seemed like almost too long, head swaying against your cheek, as if taking a moment to understand what you were saying. He then raised up his hand lazily, uncaringly, while he turned away with dull indifference in his eyes.
"No. Get out of here. I'll be fine. I'll drive home in an hour or…not, or I'll drive now and crash it into the cars, I don't know. Maybe I'll even call a stripper. Get out of here. Enjoy yourself."

The muscles on your face tensed. Your back leaned against the booth while your arms crossed on the front of your chest, looking down at the wooden table.

"Alright." You adjusted, breathing deeply. "I'll go home with-" Your eyes turned to a particularly questionable looking lizard man who had garments dressed around his shoulders, tattered and whiskery stained. "That guy over there. Right into his cab."

Bojack flung his eyes over to the man, and his eyes widened for half a moment before they relaxed back into a centered drunken lack of focus. "That guy? Are you serious?"

You shrugged, nonchalantly.

"I guess it doesn't matter. You do your unsafe thing, I'll do mine, we both risk lack of safety every night. Hardly matters. We've just been doing this for the sake of doing it."

"We've what?" Bojack's head titled as he looked you over.

"Doing this for the sake of doing it. To keep us away from the profound pain of emptiness for a little while."

"Oh." Bojack's aged, wrinkled and puffy eyes turned down, and the wet protrude of the adorability of them turned back up to you. "Yeah. Yeah. I guess."

You started to collect yourself as you raised your body up; Bojack turned his head up to you as he gazed at you, or tried to, with those complicated eyes.

"Hey."

You ignored him as you continued inching your way out of the booth.

"Hey!"

You paused as your body was halfway out of the booth, feeling a curve edge on your lip. You started to inch your way back down away, feeling a heat of goosebumps lace your skin even as you tried to shoulder your body out, feeling Bojack's protruded and widend eyes following you with that profound and rare purity you could never forget.

"You don't need to pretend like you're going into danger, or rising from a bad night, or trying to get a clear leverage on the idea of taking me home and making it look like you're worse off for not. Trust me, you're better off with the straight no."

"Exactly."

You turned as you offered him a quick, intentionally smooth smirk. His black eyes twitched as he returned your vision, body even more slumped and arms enwrapped even more lazily against the chair than it had been as he winced and looked you over. "A straight no means I can do whatever I want-and this is what I chose to do. You do what you want, I do what I want. End of story."

"End of story." Bojack scoffed, though the emotional complication in his eyes gave him away as he looked you over. "In order for there to be a story, there has to be a story to begin with."

"Well, then it shouldn't be hard for me to close the chapter on something that's nonexistent." You shouldered your way out fully now, not bothering to overlook your shoulder now. "I'll leave you alone."

Part of you meant it, though truthfully you would have rather gotten into a questionable man's car and risked danger if the trade somehow would have resulted in you being able to reassure yourself that Bojack would be safe for the night. You didn't state this; it was done and tired. You started to make your way away from the table, eyes closed, as if that would somehow make it easier.

"Ok, go ahead! Fine! Go sit your ass in some cheap ripped up car seat and risk immediate death for the sake of saying you got the last word at night! See ya!"

You didn't bother with a response, but rather tuned as you made your way towards the lizard man. He was upright and with a certain sharpness in his eyes, and the smell of whiskey and various other drugs seemed to execute from his air within mere inches of you coming near him. You felt yourself retech, but you controlled your expression as you rolled your eyes up and tried to collect yourself, keeping your reaction at a minimum. You cleared your throat in an attempt to get his attention; he was occuiped with the dolphin strippeer sitting in front of him. In the midst of the clamor of the fog, smoke, and the general heaviness of the air you could hardly hear yourself, so you cleared your throat louder. The lizard man stopped mid sentence, then turned as he looked over at you, eyes glinting in question.

You offered him a strained smoke. "Take me home?"

"Don't bother with the invitation, asshole! She's not supposed to!"
You winced at Bojack's sloppy tone for drunkenness- if only for the fact that it was clear there was a conflict in his tone and far more care there than he let on. You kept your eyes up on the lizard man while his eyes dressed you up and down, as if physically undressing you. It was, admitally, uncomfortable, but it was an uncomfortable that was better than the ideal of trying to soothe a man that didn't want to be soothed.

"I've tried to reason with him. But you can't turn something wise into something that doesn't want to be, and as much as I'm touched by his humanity and what I see him as, I also have to notice and respect the idea that there's nothing remarkable after a certain age for meeting someone who has all the same messy flaws and humanity everyone does. I'm ready to go home. Especially for while I have one."

"Nothing remarkable?" The lizard jutted up the bottom of his lip as the piercing of his mouth eased forward as he looked you over with a vague cocky pout. You felt something far too familiar in regards to your uncomfortability come over you, but you kept your own. "I wouldn't think so from the way you were responding to him a moment ago."

"Well. That was already some time ago. Now, I just want to enjoy those walls that he's given me for while I have them."

"I was just about to go." The lizard gripped his keys into his pocket, and they flashed against the several lights while he kept an eyebrows raised and twisted his fingers around it. "You want to accompany me?"

Your smile strained. You weren't usually one to play games; they were tiresome, immature, and cruel, but you needed to, for odd reasons and in even other ways that you didn't understand, but certainty felt. Bojack spoke in immature games, especially for tonight.

If that was what would get the erratic and conflicted modeled erratic mess of a man was to the forefront of what he needed and wanted from you and you, in your own fashion, wanted to give him, then it would be as it was.

You nodded cruelty. "Yes."

"Hey, ok." The lizard smirked as he looked you over, then shouldered his way past you as he began to shover his way past yours as he made his way forward and though the crowd. "You find a lizard scale of a man who looks just dangerous enough to get into the car into for adventure and decide that's a good road to go down."

You froze as you followed the lizard man halfway out, saw a flash of that stumbling body that walked his way to the front of the door. Bojack's arms were flashed out into a cramped inch of a space while his head turned up and down to the lizard in front of him. The lizard raised a brow.

"And you are?"

"Oh, god. Here we go." Bojack groaned as he snapped his head up. "The idiot is playing the who are you game to pretend he's superior. Guess what, no one is going to buy that ham. We get it, you suspend your life following strippers around for the sake of keeping your half successful career busy." He jutted his direction to the lizard, eyes wincing as he looked him over. "No one cares, scale head. Go home."

The lizard stepped back, tongue flicking out, looking back and forth between the both of you, you standing behind the lizard man a few inches. A quick eye roll and he started to slither his way past the door, shouldering his way through the curtains to the outside that would have been the end of the execution of your backward twisted punishment for caring for the swaying drunk in front of you, as well his own punishment for taking it in. You began to follow him, but Bojack stepped in front of you.

"Hey-no."

When he turned his eyes to you and spoke, there was a surprising stability of sober concern to his tone, swaying as he turned his eyes to you. His arm caressed against his hand, and his ears lowered, seemingly timid but both aggressive with built defense at the same time.

"You wanted this." You tried to shove your way past him, but Bojack kept his arm in front of you. Your eyes snapped up as you met in his, bewildered anger in your eyes as your head snapped up and looked him over.

"Hey, you can punish me in whatever way you want. I don't blame you. But don't start hurting yourself over it. It's not worth it. Whatever you do-" His hand gestured to you in a small, desperate fashion, then met by his wrist again. "-Don't do that. I know you're a wise enough woman "

"It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what happens to me."

His eyes lit up. He stumbled towards you as you made your way towards the curtain. "Hey-it does matter. It does."

"I've been told who I am, and where I belong, my entire life. And that is nobody and nowhere. I'm sorry you had to be the victim of the side affect of it for a little while."

"Yeah, I know, but-" Bojack's voice hitched up as he stepped in front of you, and then, with a vague whimper of his conflict he turned his eyes up in thought. "I'm just saying that you don't have to go out with some dangerous asshole just because I made you think you did. It's not fair to yourself." He paused as the muscles on his face furrowed as he looked you over. "And you know that."

Your hand paused on the curtain. A strange intense tension began to suffocate you, not unlike anger this time, as tense and as demanding. You turned as you met his eyes, and you wished they hadn't been so needy, puffy, large laden with a certain desperation that felt like an ache not be twisted into.

"If I can't hold the one person I feel like is worth holding, regardless of whether he believes it or not, then I may as well get fucked and drunk so I can wake up the next day and try to forget you exist. That would be less painful than the-alternative."

"What, and out onto the street? Are you serious? For me?"

Even for his drunk state, that odd emotional compulsion entered his eyes. You didn't respond, but only kept your eyes down, and you could imagine how his eyes were hardening as he looked you over.

"Don't be like that. You're too good for that."

"That dosen't stop you from acting like a cliche and stumbling drunk, does it?"

He scratched the back of his neck, and your eyes turned up if only for a moment just to catch even a hint of his eyes. His hands swirling on the glass he had taken with him-god forbid he got up without taking his glass with him in his hand even in an broken up state- and his emotions were in an odd timid pattern that called to be pressed and held, at least in his nervous mannerisms.

"Spilling yourself into bullshit relationships and going from one stupid thing to the next and not knowing what you're doing. That's for dumb actors. Or just-people, even. Dumb people who stumble around and don't know what they're doing." His hand pressed on his chest, expression earnest as your eyes turned up and caught on his. "Like me. Be better than that."

You half turned, though you wouldn't give him the full satisfaction of a full turn; not until he had found the self respect to allow you to be a part of him. But you paused, rather than fully shoving him to the side."For what?"

He rolled his eyes. "Christ, I don't know. For…yourself." He turned his head away as he squinted in torment thought. You wished his hands weren't so soft, lovable, gently wrought just in existence, adorable, made even more so by the way it grazed on his arm with that uncertain air.

"Jesus, this is so stupid." He whispered it, as if it himself. His hand found the back of his hair, fingers grazing against the black sharp mane."For…me? For me. If that's what works for you."

You turned to him now. Not even the murmuring that was coming behind with the smoke induced strippers or the general abrasive loud laughter was able to prevent the simple idea of only being able to hear him. His troubled eyes turned back to you, and even he seemd unaffected by the chaos of the space. Your eyes turned up to meet his, and there was a warmth of the most parental and gentle contentment in his eyes as he looked you over; and it drew you in entirely.

"There we are." His voice was somber, gentle, his eyelids lowered as he gazed at you with all that warm profound depth and guidance you knew he had. A small smile, almost bashful, grzed his lip as he looked you over. "Thank you."

His fingertips contuiend to scratch the side of his neck neck as he looked you over in concern, eyes squinting now so much in apology that it almost seemed to reach an unconscious manner.

Your body readjusted, your fingers taking themselves off the curtain entirely.

"You know, I've bene a long path, and for the longest time I assume being suicidal and accpeting a struggle life and death was all there was."

The cocnern on his face didn't leave him as he looked you over. "What happened?"

"Nothing. But there's an unfathomably complex way to the way that it is. All of it. The terrible things people say, philosophy of others of existence or anything beyond concerning it, your own thoughts, the low people you see yourself in, the nights and days where you're sure you'll die tomorrow. And it all has this constant, ongoing life-even when its sure to be ended. And I felt that way a few days ago, the same way I always have, and the same way I alays have did I not actually die. And now here I am, again. When you're in this constant black thread of abraisve dispair, you die a thousand times before your real death, assuming it will come soon. And for every time it dosen't, one experience of anticipating death comes after another."

"Sure." Bojack's eyes turned as he looked you over, and there was the clear intention in his remarkable eyes that he was, in an adorable and lost fashion, trying to follow his understanding of what you were saying. Had he not been drunk, you knew there would have been countless profound words from his observation of you; as it was, there was something more precious, which was being a stumbling lost adorability just for the sake of it. "Though I can't imagine why, and I would highly recommend you look somewhere else for..physiological purpose. Because messes, even if I try not to-" He sighed as he rubbed his arms, turning his head away as ears lowered. "-It's happening a lot faster here than anywhere else. And I can deal with that, it's not a problem for me. I'm better at handling them than anyone else, or anyone who ever will be. But-you should give yourself better. If you can."

You stepped forward half an inch. He stepped back just as quickly, in a reactionary fashion, though you caught the glint of regret in his eyes just as quickly, the lowering of his ears that spoke as a apology.

"I didn't feel like I had ever had anything better until I found your mess. If that counts for anything to you. But it certainly does for me."

The noise of the back club was now gone entirely. His eyes flickered in a sharp way for a moment, as if having been physically slapped, though it was dressed in that seemed gentle execute of a temperament of something that was so soft that for it to not be cradled seemed like a wound you would never truly heal from if not able to give it to those wrinkled, troubled and secretly hidden sleepless nights no one had seen before, would ever see, or who had ever bothered to see, even the slightest form of comfort.

"I don't understand why you even need to keep yourself involved. I got drunk because I wanted to show you what you could expect, and of course it was depressingly easy. I thought it would be-" He sighed, the sound raspy and heavy with conflict, turning his head around with a heavy, empty conflict in his eyes as he turned his head to the side. "What you needed to see."

Your body straightened. Whatever it was that you would try to be able to help him with, it seemed he simply hadn't been able to find that grounding of what you were trying to convince him of-there was a failed healing inside himself and he certainly, for whatever reason, was hanging onto it.

"Then why you do you keep involving yourself? You don't have to come after me. I already gave you an alterative. I can go follow the lizard home-"

Bojack's eyes winced, and after a moment of anger flared in his eyes, he turned his head back to you, looking you over "No. Don't do that. You don't know what kind of guy is out there. Who he is."

"Right. Maybe I'll get bent over. Get fucked. Or whatever happens. You go your way, I go mine."

"Don't-" Bojack cramped his hands together, looking down at them as they unfurled. "I know what you're trying to do, and I get it. I know I'm pushing you and making this your problem, but-don't let my problems and how I respond to them be yours."

"Why does it matter to you?"

You indicated your eyes to the several dolphin strippers that were chattering and murmuring quietly between one another, clearly at an ends for having any worthwhile intentions, their slender eyes flickering between on another in a catty air. "Go smash those dolphins."

A dark glint entered in Boajck's eyes.

"Yeah, because they want me."

The statement was mocking, lowest of the esteem towards himself as he spoke it, and it glimmered in his eyes. You paused as you looked him over, feeling the wall of the statement as he spoke it; the abrasive edge that came along with it that stopped from any statement being made further without an odd form of humilation following.

He swayed, raised out his hands, grunted. You leaned forward subconsciously, feeling your heart thudding erratically in your chest. Your hand reached out, then met the side of your body again just as quickly as you saw that conflicted warning in his eyes.

"Not that I don't have plenty of practice of smashing women I don't want from my own end. Clearly. You can tell that from the..several marks on my body from women who were too high to even know what they were doing. Probably because they just wanted to use me for tweeting to get attention on their little accounts." His eyes winced mockingly as he gestured his hands up at the portrait of the idea his words painted; he had done that routine far too many times, the action and the layers to it far since jammed into the ground and overprocessed to completion, not even having anything left to be learned from, just the same tied and tried forms of routines time and time again.

You nodded, turning down to your hands, as if his shame was your own.

"I know. But you don't have to be defined hy what anyone ever says about you, no matter what. People's precautions are flawed, and you don't have to listen."

"Yeah." Bojack grunted as his eyes flared as he looked you over. "You would know, right? More than most people ever will."

Your eyes flashed up to him at that, and a vague shock went through you as you looked him over.

"What?"

Bojack seemed to out of it to be aware entirely of how you spoke; he grunted as his eyes rolled forward as he turned forward and lifted his shirt up as he gazed down at his stomach, skin protruding and the soft plush of his body poking out.

"It's so stiff. Why is it so striff?" He swayed as he gave another uneven gruff of a breath; behind, you could hear the shrill chuckle of several woman from behind. Your lip pressed together as you eased your hand beside his shirt as you tried to pull it down.

"Bojack-"

"Hey-it's fine. No one is paying attention at this point. Trust me, I know how the dynamic goes."

You paused, and with that did you allow his shirt to be pulled by his hand again; his body was swaying, lovehandles plush around his pants as he looked down at his skin. You felt an allure of warmth go through you at the round curve of his stomach, the soft poking of his skin, the happy trail of his black hair.

But more than that, there were bruises, countless, pressed against his skin. Your eyes darkened as you started to keep your hands by his body that spoke of countless carefree nights and even more impsulive days, tonight being one of countless, forgetting whatever little malicious game you had played. Your kneeled downward as your eyes flicked back and forth between the various marks.
"Can I?"

Your eyes turned up, and Bojack shrugged, nonchalantly, in that invalidating way of his own emotions that kept him from too much vulnerability.

"Knock yourself out."

"I have a feeling that you wouldn't be doing this if you weren't so knocked out."

Bojack gave a messy, abrupt and uneven chuckle. You took that as the best answer you would get.

"I took it off because-'' He slurred, body swaying, bottom eyelid winced. "-Because the fabric hurts my skin. For the record, not fun, no matter what babies are judging you, or trying to fill up their time until they can go."

"I can see that."

He winced as he looked down at you. "Can you?'

You kneeled down, your hand pressing against the curve of his stomach. You heard Bojack briefly let out a sharp breath as his head turned up, shivering under your caressed touch.

You didn't know if it was a good idea, but it hardly mattered. You leaned forward as you pressed your lips against the side of his bruises, feeling Bojack let out a soft shiver and a breath in response to your intimacy, and his worn eyes closed as he gave a soft breath, teeth poked through his lip.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't get too sad-eyed or corny about any sympathy." He started to pull the sweater down, and you got yourself up from where you were kneeled down in front, turning your head up as you looked at him, though hesitantly. "And don't get caught up in anything anyone tells you in the future about us, ok? No matter what other shitty thing happens, it dosen't need to be that."

Your head titled to the side.

"Why?"

"Because-" His ears lowered, and his eyes were sickly as he looked in front of him, detached and foggy. "Because no matter how much you might think you love someone, or want to be with them, it's not worth the amount of comparison people will put you through. People telling you that you shouldn't be with him, that you don't' deserve to be, that you're not good enough or you're some desperate pass for a washed up star."

"Am I?" Your eyes turned up as Bojack gave a slight grumble and eased the fabric back onto his stomach, eyes winced and ears lowered as he gave a breath and pulled it back over his stomach.

"Doesn't always happen. The bad phases and forms of cope for woman, I mean." He gave a slight breath, shoulders rolling as he eased the rest of the fabric over his stomach, giving a shaken breath as he did so. "And even if that was all you were to me, it's not far for you to take that on your shoulders and think that's all you are just because this scenario decided to define you as that." His eyes met yours again as he finished pulling over the fabric, a bit too tight and wrapping against his skin with lovability, over his body. He winced as he looked you over. "Ok?"

You paused as you met his puffy eyes.

"Am I, though?"

Bojack's eyes widned, panic flaring in them, and he turned his head to the side as his ears splayed down, hand wrapping by his arm. "I don't-" Bojack sighed, as if trying to readjust an answer to one to make you feel comfortable in the erratic chaos of his mine. He turned his eyes up as he met your eyes somberly. "I don't know. A lot of smashes are just smashes. These were from ones with a particularly abrasive weed induced woman who had no problem placing her cigarettes on me for a, as she called it, 'edgey reaction' for photos."

You blinked. "And you let her do it?"

"Yeah. Sure. As long as we both got our thing out of it, which we did-or at least, she did. She got her several thousand likes and retweets on her content. I got to fill the void for a moment." His lip pouted as he looked you over, eyes dim, and the exhaustion in his eyes met his tone as he spoke; "That was what we both needed. That was what we got."

You felt something in your face twitch. "You should respect yourself and your body."

Bojack squinted, chuckling. "Why? No one respects anyone's bodies. Especially men. You take what you get and that's all there is."

"You want honesty?"

His body leaned back on the grey couch, his dry eyes turning a she looked you over. "Something tells me you'll give it to me anyway."

"You should respect your body. At least yourself. You can't come after me and tell me not to make impulsive decisions and then turn around and do the same thing."

He didn't respond; rather did he only return your gaze with a squinted and sway to his torso. There was a glint of conflict in his eyes, though it remained unspoken, and you knew he wouldn't dare speak it- not unless you gently reached out your hand to where those secret narratives were placed and gently wrought it out, one gentle sway of a tenderment of a pull at a time to fully exude it outward into the engagement of where he he had been too entangled and lost with the cruelty of others- the inner narrative of abrasive fight within himself, the general storyline of lining of what he was and had been that forced him to not even know himself due to listening to others that knew themselves just as little. But someone a stender and lost as Bojack would believe them.

Or perhaps he was just being impulsive, his unusual reckless and black lack of permission to give himself anything. His lack of ability to go to you or to see what your warmth would be worth, so unused to having anybody who genuinely tried to bring good, was evident in everything he did.

Though truth be told, your thoughts about him were all built on assumptions, though every way only felt like a call towards a deeper extent of your curiosity to know him. He was an executive of charms, handsome truths both physically and emotionally, but he was entangled into a deep confusion that was desperate to get out.

But maybe even that wasn't true, and that was the deepest pain; you didn't know him. Even with any discovering of his suffering, and the irreplaceable intimacy of it, you didn't know. He could be lost and aimless in how he was, latched onto the over familiarity of it and its comfort, but even if that interpretation was true, you didn't know it in its entirely. You could be looking into a change that didn't want to be made, or even exist, for the sake of another countless attempt to find any kind of reason within your desperation to try and make amiability with your suffering.

But you did know yourself. You knew what he did to you. It was painful not to be able to take care of him, and made even worse so-that indeniable ache-that he didn't allow it. If the circle continued, he would destroy himself in his own way, in his own specific language that only he understood and you would be left out of the equation. And you, in your own way, while you drank and stumbled through empty streets and accepted every day as that empty abrasive upcoming death at every turn and watched the flashing of his face on the news and the occasional snippets, wouldn't forget him, and through lack of forgetting would you fall further into a knowing that life wouldn't be worth living without cradling that irreplaceable sens of belong with him into every given day and morning.

You would, decidedly in that scenario, find a way to gradually fall apart from longing in his. Now that you knew it, living without it knowing what you were mising on was unfathomable. There was an indeniable life, a sense of cosntnat belogning, a richness of the present and the simplicity of life lost from you from the simcplity of youth and into indescribable constant sickliness as happened with everyone eventually, and there would be no forgetting it. You knew most things came and wnet like a tempairy tide; but not this. You knew it, beyond doubt; the same way th feeling of belonging overcame any psychological human negativity; the hardest thing to overcome, and yet not impossible in a wise mind, as all wisdom granted a person; possibly the most viable thing for a life and the changing adapt of endurance, and the quality Bojack was deprived, though possible through the occasional glimpses he gave, was suffering from the most.

You didn't feel the need to entwin with him fully because of the need to make up for somhtin from your end; you had long since accepted your life as was and for what it was, no matter how hard every day it had hit you. Not because you weren't both full on your roads in life and a story on your own, but because you were those things; completed with flaws and strengths, and to meet another person who had the same in a way that had a resounding complement of warmth was nothing less than an undeniable, unrelenting longing of recognition for the beauty and rhythm that would occur if allowed to be shared.

But he wouldn't allow himself to believe in that desire that he felt and denied himself- if only because he felt it too, and he felt the full extent of feeling as if he didn't deserve it.

There were two possibilities, then-he would turn from you and know in the back of his timid and precious air while he was banged and fucked by woman didn't care about him that he was allowing himself, in countless fashions, to fall apart again; or he would accept your love but never full believe, and therefore, feel it.

Neither proposition was one that you wanted to believe in, and neither proposition was one that you wanted to be true for him, either way. And you knew he felt it, too.

"Come here, darling."

"Darling." His hands played together; his own soft execution that furthered that ache, but the small put on his lip raised as he looked you over."Literally no one has ever called me that in my life."

"I have a feeling there's a lot of things I want to do and share with you that no one has ever called you in your life. And that's only the start."

His eyes flickered between your gaze. Teeth poked out, ears lowered and twitched, conflict dressed in his eyes; and even then was there a deeper sense of wanting.

You tried to touch him again, reaching out your fingers to press on his hands entangled in his in thought-but he quickly snatched his hand away while he stumbled backward and further behind the couch. He lazily waved his hand, so sloppily that you could tell what his clear intention was, clearly trying to throw you.

"No." His hands pressed on his stomach. His ears lowered, gazing at you timidly. "I'll call a cab. They'll take you home. You'll be fine. You had a great night."

"I didn't."
He rolled his eyes. "Ok, so you had a terrible night. All the more of a reason to take you home."

His hand reached out to the phone in his pocket, eyes hardened as he pressed his hand on it and stumbled to the left and right while he got himself up a few inches. You kneeld back to give him some pace.

"Here we go." He grumbled as he jammed the cash into your hand. Your eyes turned down as you crumpled it under your fingertips, looking it over. Your eyes turned back up as you met Bojack's complicated eyes. "Buy bullshit cab, make sure the driver has enough stars so he doesn't kill you." He burped lightly as he handed it to you. "Purchased for you. No need to worry about anything for tonight." He waved his hands lazily and drunkenly as he looked you over. "You can make up for all the time you spent worry about me tonight."

He turned his head back over to the door that led to the outside. He indicated for you to follow him, trying to exude a sense of formable lightness, but the timid nature of his hand on his arm gave him away as he started to stumble to it.

"Out the door." His swaying body and dim eyes lazily snapped over to it, arms pulling forward while his defeated dry eyes turned as he looked you over. "You'll be home before you know it. Grateful to get out of this place, more than likely."

You didn't want to follow him, but you knew you needed to. You were tired of fighting back and forth between the desire to care for him and his desire to fight it. You started to follow him out of the door as he shouldered his way through it, making his way back out to the outside back street. There was a small crowd of more woman, all of them smoking a stick that had that foggy and trailing white fog to it, and all of them wearing either the plastic form of their outfit while it snapped along their bodies sturng with various different shots of herion, red scratches, anything that symbolized an impsulive and fogged speedy night.

"Oh, hello. What's brought you here? Dizzying desire for celebrities? Desperation for some validation?"

A stripper smirked; a pale human woman, with her hair slicked across her cheek, eyeshadow spilled across her eyes and she gave a moan that suggested she had long since left the atmosphere regardless. She stumbled forward until she jjolted against his body; there was a crowd of several of them that were dressed in a circle, and some of them turned their attention to the both of you from their low mumbling of their quiet talk of small lives and a detached night while they turned and heard the both of you stumble out. You felt an odd acceptance overcome you in that moment for the chaos of the night; the same way you had forced yourself t find accptance with how terrible things were and how you would never have a home again, and letting go of hope and falling into rhythm with constant darkness and the exhaustion of enver having a grounding or place being the ironic thing about the acceptance of your life.

Bojack grazed his hand around her shoulder, drunken and detached, as he started to inch his way past her. One of the woman, another sea creature kind, snatched out a fin to pleasure him, fin grazing his thigh, but he twisted as he jumbled his way through the crowd, tripping over his feet as he waved his hand in front of him lazily and gave her that dry and detached rejection.

"Na-huh. I don't do entertainment for disgruntled wannabe waives. Think you meant to emulate with his precious wife."

You followed, shouldering through the movement of the various woman, different in species but all the same in the way they dressed and their air of detached indifference towards where there had been an odd agreement to their suffering and the indiffernce of existence; you knew the feeling all too well, the feeling of relief only coming from acceptance of the unforgiving mode of your life, falling into it and becoming it, rather than fighting it. You tried to keep your eyes on Bojack as you saw how his stout body was waving through the bodies, looking oddly graceful with his splayed out mane behind him and the pulling down of his clothes as he gave his rumbeld gruff breaths; dysfuntionality, you were learning, looked well on him, or it was a sign of something you were meant to see. You kept your arms firmly by your side as you kept shoulders through the woman, smelling of sweat and plastic as you followed his body through the crowd.

"Ok." Once Bojack and you had managed to ease your way through the crowd, he gave an abrupt grunt as he turned, looking at you with that detached graze of his exhausted eyes as he looked you over. "You get to go outside and get in the cab. It'll be here in about fifteen minutes."

The jaded, 'get on with it' look didn't leave his expression as he snatched out his money and took out a wade of cash. You still had some crumpled in your palm as he handed more to you. You look up at him in question.

"I'm giving you at least a hundred to do whatever you want with whatever happens out there. Don't worry about giving it back, it'll be too much of a pain in the ass to have to be in contact again after everything that transpired tonight." His eyes lowered as he gave a bashful shrug, and then a soft sigh. "And, obviously, it's not as if I need it anyway."

You turned as you looked over the money; crumpled and discarded, just as it was with Bojack himself, suffering, as most were, from the inability to be on his own with his thoughts.

"Go on." His graceful voice was wobbling and grumbled as he jabbed it to you. "Take it."

"Are you going to stay here tonight?"

Bojack gave a gruff breath as he looked you over.

"Why does that have to matter at this point tonight?"

"The world is not very wise. And it suffers for it. Don't punish yourself for not being like it-or for going your own way."

Bojack's eyes turned up as he looked you over with a vague wince.

"What?"

"Diane! My precious forthcoming bride!"

An execution of annoyance flashed itself over Bajack's features. His head turned as he saw fawning over a stumbling Diane; both of them making their way through the now cakcling and entertained crowd of the strippers as they began to step back, eyes turning as thye watched Diane make her way through the crowd, her eyes lowered, lips pressed together as she pulled her bright husband through the crowd.

Diane's hair was slapped across her face, vomit coming out from the side of her mouth while she pressed her hand on her stomach. Her body was slung forward while 's arm slung lazily against her body, though the innocent desperation and concern didn't leave his face

Bojack's eyes hardened as he turned to the dog. "Precious forthcoming bride? That doesn't even make sense."

"At least he's getting to take care of her," you said sternly.

Bojack's eyes flashed to you."Whatever. That is the most pretentious sentence I've ever heard in my life. And coming from him, that's a lot.."

He pressed his fingertip further on the money, his fingertips pressing erratically against it for a moment, then placed it to you and your palms that were in front of his that were clumsy keeping the bills in your palm.

"Take this and go home. Get out of here." He waved his now free hand beside him as you looked over the money. "Trust me. You'll be better off even in some asshole's boring car then you ever will be here."

Your hand pressed on the money, and you took it; only to hesitate. Your hands caressed on the side of his palms when he reached forward to make sure the new dollar bill were fully pressed in your hand, gently tracing against the skin in a suggestion. Your eyes turned up to Bojack and he met your eyes; he rolled his eyes up as exasperation crossed his expression.

" How many times-" His fingertips nervously scratched his cheek, but he didn't pull away. Pity, rather than annoyance, now seemed like it was tracing his eyes more so than before. "How many times do I have to tell you, no."

Your fingers inched away, though it felt like the least natural thing you wanted to do. The fidgeting of Bojack's fingertips were executing his nervousness, the desire and the fear of being able to execute an acceptance of spiritual order that he could feel as you did, whether he accepted it or not.

"You'll do anything to make sure that you don't get what you deserve, won't you?" Your eyes turned down to the money, and then you crumpled it firmly in your hand, easing it into your pocket.

His face broke into a timid wince. "Hey, don't. I'm making this as little complicated as possible. It's supposed to be a good thing." A slight desperation came over his features as he spoke the words, and for even that moment of vulnerability you could tell he meant it.

Your hands gently pressed on the money as you started to take it away from his palm entirely, then turned as you raised your lip and gave him a small nod.

"There. Was that so hard?" Bojack crossed his arms as he looked at you pointedly. "Now just take your money and prance on home and don't worry about feeding into any bullshit from anyone else, because in these parts, they'll be plenty."

A stripper jammed by him and she shouldered her way past Bojack; he gave an abrupt hitch of a yell as his body twisted towards the side while the woman cackled. Boajck squinted as he glared at the waving woman. His expression furrowed as he looked the humroed woman over.

"I'm sorry, what was the point of that""

He grunted as he felt more hits from the moving bodies; more strippers were coming to surround the two of you. Your hand reached out and you pressed it on his arm as you pulled him back from stumbling over his feet as he continued to get thrashed by the bodies, some of them looking over Bojakc flirtaious, others simly moving by the both of you to frantically make their way across the street, crossfaded and on various stimulants as they rushed their way over the street.

"No, honey, don't-"

He spoke the word before he realized he was saying it as he felt your hand tugging him by the side as you pulled him to you. A temperament of shock executed on his face as he turned his eyes to you. He snatched his arm away -as if he had been physically insulted or sparked by what he perceived as a mistake. Once you released his arm, he looked you over as his eyes dimmed, ghosting his hand beside where you had gripped him as he looked you over.

"I told you to leave." He spoke it sternly, turning to where he was brushing off where you had given even the slightest sign of being rebellious over what he had told you.

"With you stumbling and still being drunk? I don't think so."

"That's none of your business."
"Isn't it?"

"It's not. That's why I said it wasn't." He gave you that squinted flair of his eyes, ears lowered. Lovable as the action was, there was plenty of a genuine point behind it. "How many times do you need to hear it? Or do we need to make an even bigger mess out of something that you can't accept won't change?"

"Then let me try to make it my business."

"Yeah. You've made that perfectly clear." His eyes turned up to the open door where Diane and had walked out of, the sounds of the jamming of the music booming from the dust of the light of the inside, bodies swaying, voices cheering. His ears lowered, and his hand reached out to you, pressing on the middle part of your back as he look you over with insistence. There was a gentleness to it enough that you didn't feel the need to fight it this time; only to look at him with the wordless begging to not be forced to leave him alone, or to ignore what was so deeply felt.

"There's no rules to this life thing. What one action leads to doesn't promise what the lifeless lies and stereotypes in your movies are always telling you. You won't know unless you try."

Bojack's eyes flared in emotion as he looked you over. "And what do you know about trying? Did you try your way all the way over to the side of the empty street?"

"Your fingertips cramped, your eyes burned, skin hot.

"I have to fight every day to survive. You learn everything from that."

"Sure. Except for the concept of taking the advice of someone who knows better than you in regards to how the actual world works."

"What would you know about it? Have you gone anywhere but those four walls more than a few weeks and when you did, into soulless suffocated spaces like this?"
"Hey." Bojack's ears flew back as he gave you a hard look as his fingertip swiped to you. Your eyes turned down, but you held your own.

"You learn more with nothing than you ever will following the complacent cliche mundanity of the majority. Which you have. Don't you tell me what I do or don't know because you don't recognize it."

The heat in Bojack's eyes didn't decrease-but ane xhustion, not unlike the extnesion of his heated frustration, turned him over as his eased back, pressing his hand by his snout as he closed his eyes and gave a breath.

"Please stay outside. The cab will be there when you're ready." His hand fell a few inches away from his tired eyes as he looked through them and looked you over. "Which it looks like you definitely are."

"If I could just stay for the night."

He gave an abrupt tension of his expression as his ears lowered while he looked you over. "You don't get to make that choice."

"Why not? It's my night."

"Because I don't want you to!"

His voice was raising, reaching an octave of what seemed like an oddly executed sense of desperation. Several of the stripper woman chuckeld, the majoirty of them off put by Bojack's heavy breath as he gazed at you pointdly.

But you didn't feed into it; didn't back down. Your eyes turned to Bojack definitely as you spoke; "I can do whatever I want. If you take something for what it is on the surface without seeing all the realistic and innately small details from beginning to end of how something exists and why, you'll understand what it all actually means. If you spend you life in denial or only seeing what you want,, you'll never know anything. I want to be on this journey with you, every grimy and true detail. It's the only thign that will ever be human-for me or for you."

The life in Bojack's eyes emptied as he looked you over. "Not in this case, you can't."

He shoved his hand further on your back until you jolted through the crumbling space of the bodies. You didn't want to reach out to the extent of what you needed to do, but you knew you had to; your arm twisted back as it slammed on the side of his wrist, stopping him from pushing you further out the door.

"You don't get to make this choice for me."

His ears lowered, and his eyes squinted in a challenge.

"Oh, yeah? Fine." He snatched his hands away from yours, eyebrows raised up teasingly as he gave you a pointed look and threw his hands forward. "Then I don't get to make this choice for you. But you don't get to hold me."

His sentence was caught off by an abrupt cough, lungs collapsing on the side of his throat as his body turned abruptly forward, hand pressed on the side of his stomach as he slammed a hand on his stomach. A pant came out of his mouth and his black and puffy eyes were even more squinted in pain and noticeable than they had been before; you noticed now just how sickly his expression and skin was. His snout took on one of a sickless as his teeth poked, eyes turned a he breathed in an uneven pant.

"Bojack."

"Do…don't." He waved a hand frantically. "I'm totally fine."

"You're not fine. At all."

"If you keep trying to pull back the layers of what you think you want to know, you're going to know how horrible the truth is. Ånd I know you don't want that. No one does, no matter what kind of idiot they are that they think they do."

One thing had become clear towards the general smooth excess of the night; he was unused to hearing anything in any particular precious or coherent fashion, and even more untreated towards responding to it. The way you had been and were talking to him tonight with any form of romanticism was rendered as nothing less than a vastly foreign experience, and it showed on the fight of his expression, the lowering of his body, the fight towards any coherent help. His body turned to you as he continued to pant through the heavy broken breath of his shattering rhythm of the desperate attempt at keeping himself together.

"Get…out of here. The cab is right there. Right..right by the edge, it'll be there. I promise." He raised himself up, despite the clear trouble the action had as he indicated his head to the side of the road, paved by the stagnant street lights, yellow and dim. He raised up his phone as he looked down at it, squinting through the sickness as much as he was able while he looked over at the screen. "Says it's about five minutes away. You'll be fine."

"And you?"

"Me?"

He chuckled, albeit seemingly nervously, turning his head towards the curved figures that walked past his eyes. One orange curved fish passed by his plane field of vision and he stumbled forward as he manahed to raise himself upward even as you reached out a hand to help, but his arms were delicltecy snapped outward as he manage to balance himself with a mumble grunt, snapping his arm on the side of the fish stripper's strut while he did so. She turned, stopped as she felt the graze of his hand as he looked her with with a detached tired glint. "I have a good few options to keep myself busy. This is just..a simple Horseman night. You know what I mean, fish scales?"

The fish stripper turned wide eyes and more luminous attention towards him. She shrugged him off with a sharp turn. "Learn how to breathe right. It will help."

She started to shoulder her way through the rest of the crowd of the strippers leaving the club for the night, high heels clicking as she strutted her way past the stree, and Bojack stumbled his head back with that still same squint of helplessness in his eyes as he tripped over his feet back towards the net of the crowd.

His eyes turned to you, as if on cue, still with that drunken sickliness in his eyes, and the sting of rejection clearly left itself firmly masked on his face. Despite that defeat on his face, there was still that certain bitter and abrasive fight that glimmered on the edge of his expression, at war with his desire to fight anything real. Still, that gradual fight and acceptance was starting to leave his troubled tinted eyes and the squint of his expression of a bewildered melancholy.

Those were the small signs; the signs of someone who was now beginning to fall firmly into that drunk and lost defeat that he had, rightfully, been feeling all night.

"Come here." Your head reached out.

"That wasn't anything you needed to actually…pay attention to. You have a cab and one of those trashy…drivers waiting for you outside. That'll be fine."

You allowed your body to take over more than your mind at this given point; you reached as you allowed your arms to meet that stained whisky stained shirt that dressed on his body.

"How long until you wait for me to cradle you? Hold you?"

"No-that's not a thing."

"Anything can be. And I know you feel it."

A raspy wheeze left his lips. He twisted his head up towards the rest of the illuminated lighted space as he snapped his hand up in a gesture of a flashy and mocking fashion over to where the rest of the stripeprs were-there was only a few left, but just enough to turn their heads over as Bojack gave a raspy and detached call;

"Hey-does anyone want to do me a favor and help get this woman out of here safely?"

Your hand reached up towards where his fingers were teasing on being in the embedded around the spaces of yours, squeezing around the side of the spaces of his hand while you raised your hand up and squeezed your hand against his so he was fully drawn to focusing on you. He neither fought nor denied the feeling of his hand pressing on yours, rather did he go limp as his eyes turned and looked at you with that sickly inner wordless exude of help.

'You, darling," you pressed a kiss on his knuckles, gently closing your eyes as your lips met against the warmth of his fleshy palm. "You are so precious, and you've never been treated that way, which means you can't imagine how to accept it."

"That isn't…it's better this way."

"I know I say this a lot, but I mean it every time. You're just as precious and just as worthy of being spoken in that soft and sweet way the same way that speaks to Diane-as much as anybody. You are the most remarkable thing I've ever taken in, the most worthwhile, astounding thing I've ever seen, experienced, or known. When I see other lovers, the way they get to treat the other, the soft way they speak to them, the gentle exaltation of how they love one another and how they get to handle their loved one so preciously, I wish I could do that with you. Can I treat you like that? Can I treat you the way that I see you? Can I just hold you?"

"That is a lot of questions that you expect me to know the answer to right off the bat."

His words were bewildered and full of a soft confusion, and you murmured in a soft utterance of amusement as you leaned forward, head grazed on the side of his shoulder as it pressed on the edge of his arm. Your lips turned as you pressed your lips on his shoulder, tattered and broken up in the rough night towards which he had allowed for it.

"I can't help it."

That was all he said, a simple confession, exhausted in frustration, as he leaned forward, but even that stumbling was his own execution of how he was accepting what he allowed to happen. Your fingertips danced around the threads of his mane.

"I can't either. I just want to, sweetheart. Everything about you. It brings out the romanticism in me in the best way."
"You might want to question why that is."

"I can't help it. I don't need to ask it, it just is. I've stopped worrying about making sense of anything." Your fingertips continued to circle into the back of his mane, threads gently curling into your fingertips. "Let me take care of you. Let me."

Your words were now whispered in the way only lovers spoke, with that soft whisper of a tenderment that seemed like it was almost too precious to touch the physical surroundings of how it exalted in the outside atmosphere surrounding you. Both of your senses executed itself in what seemed like it would only be experienced in dreams.

The both of you would eventually implode in your life, more than likely; you were aware of the way your infatuation was concerned with recognition the way that it did with any two people who were deeply interwoven. But they were quieted in the wake of the rhythm between the two of you; there was too many issues, so you thought and so he thought, to truly have any sense of a concluded peace, but as you both fell into the rhythm while his snout hestinley pressed on your shoulder, and there was an undeniable sense of peace. The stop of destruction that was met from loving on the both of each other was something neither of you would ever get tired of being able to experience. Again and again; though this was the first time you had ever felt his intimacy and his teamperment, it felt familiar, in a family based and comforting way that came from two who knew each other before they truly knew.

His snout pressed on your shoulder. A soft, raspy mumble left his lips as his heat pressed on your skin.

"You feel nice. It almost makes your stubborn executed intentions feel worth managing."

"I'll take that as a complement."

"It is."

His tone was soft. Welcoming. Kind.

You could imagine his face; it had the biggest temportment of precious innocence whenever he truly got to the extent of allowing himself to feel. His face was melted in a drunken superior, too lost within dulled senses for you to think this truly continued as a genuine decision.

But you were melted, undone, torn as a ribbon at how his softness grazed on your body. The whole night he had excited the look of a manchild that had dealt and prolonged towards you with an odd compelling invite. No matter whatever deniability he had fed to himself for strength, there was that undeniable look of that helpless call, whether he knew it or not; even whether you yourself did.

"Let me see you."

You muttered the request, gently pressing away from him without taking away that weight his body had on yours.

"We all know how I look. Fat guy, goes to strippers, gets drunk. Gets bent. Big deal. Night closed."

Still, he started to guide himself away from your arms. His eyes were lowered in exhaustion as he looked into your eye-but he did look inot them. You reached out a hand as you guided it under his bags, and he squinted gently with a slight wince in response.

The puffiness under his eyes were now particularly protruded, giving away towards a demented exhustion that was an exhult towards desperation. It wasn't just drinking too much that had led him here tonight, in this specific state. His eyes wined under your touch with a fight of pain as he felt your fingertips guiding along his eyes while he winced as he looked you over.

"If you do let me love you, I want to be able to make this easier for you on any given day. In whatever way you'll allow me to. I would never want to take you away from you-but certainly I want to follow you with where you're at, and I want to love you with where you're at even more so."

Boajck tripped over his feet and he fell further into your body. A half raspy chuckle, part pain, part abrupt surprise jolted in his tone as his body abruptly slammed on the side of your features, snout curving and resting on the side of your neck. You let out a soft breath, then quickly did you feel your lips curve into a quiet smile with contentment as you reached up your arms and felt your arms raise firmly around his body, rhythm pressing against his own swaying one as he melted against your own, his own plush hand pressing around the curve of your neck.

"Ok, ok," he chuckled, awkwardly, stumbling into the curves of your arms now fully. "Into your arms. Wish granted. You're welcome."

There was a noticeable gentleness in his approach. Bojack let out another disoriented chuckle, face nuzzling against your own.

Slowly did you guide the rhythm of your body against his with your own arms. Though there was still just as much cackling, muttering and general air of the cattiness surrounding the space, it hardly mattered. It was simply a backdrop now, as irrelevant as it came, and if anything it was only a response to how lucky the two of you were; you certainly knew it.

You could feel his drunken smile tracing on his snout as it nuzzled further on your shoulder. He fit so perfectly, gracefully in your arms for someone so considerably larger than you, and it certainly seemed as if you had never had such a sense of something that made sense as much as you did now. His natural rhythm of his mistepping clumsiness was perfectly building up around the edge of your own, and now he was accepting how good it felt to be treasured, craldded, adorned.

How to take care of him-you didn't know, but that wasn't the point. The best things in life often had no point, or even any reason for existing at all. And with his arms pressing on your waist it seemed as if there was hardly, if any, reason or any want to be able to fight against it for as long as he would allow it.

For the time being there was no fight, no resistance. Rather was there just the relaxed feeling of his defeat of his body against your own, preceded with that melting that came along with the response to the rhythm of your arms.

Your lips raised up to the side of his twitching ears. "You are gone, aren't you?" Your eyes turned against the worn and unconveitonal wear of his face, age and stress and wrinkles into his skin, and you wonderment of your tenderness came over you so deeply and profoundly that you felt it slip out before you could stopt it; "My love."

A soft hum left his lips. He opened one eye as he met your softness.

"My love. My love. Doesn't that sound strange. Especially in the way it's worded. And spoken."

His lips pressed on your shoulder, and each one seemed just as detached as it was before, but just as executed with that tender intimacy of gentleness. He mumbled the statement time and time again with a reflective, disbelieving humor, the way he did with any given dressing up of a tone and a word, hot breath lacing your shoulder as the words left his lips, as if tasting the way they sounded.

Much like the way you were holding him, they were foreign and distant to what he knew, and trying to cope with the idea that such a precious term was dedicated to him; or of even having such a response to it at all after hatred and dislike being his main form of comfort for so long.

And he was relishing it; it added a new gentleness to his lips, his eyebrows furrowed into a gentle defeat of exhausted romanticism that spoke of a tender heart long since desperate to hear the words spoken. "My love."

"My love." You muttered it against his cheek, your skin threading across his skin as you relished in the feeling of his brawny skin across yours; the genuine contentment of his rasped tone in response to yours. "Corny, maybe in the eyes of what it feels like with the jaded culture that surrounds you."

Your own tone-soft laced guidance to the safe place of where you wanted to guide him.

"No. No. That is adorable."

Your smile curved up in a slight confirmation of your appreciation towards his gradual opening. Your fingertips continued to ease across his mane, threading down his coarse hair while you thought over the moments of quiet consideration for the first time after countless confliction that came from a source that you could only begin to guess where it originated from.

"Are you ok?" Your lip turned and grazed across his ear.

"If you only knew."

"I think I do know. Or I can guess."

He raised a brow, partly teasingly. "That obvious?"

"You wouldn't let me talk to you like this otherwise."

"Possibly. Though at this point, the room is spinning so bad that I'm not sure where I am, where you are, or where I'm supposed to be. If anywhere. Both emotionally-and..-
A soft breath left his lips, heat of his breath easing across your face as his snout traced by your face. "-Literally, I guess."

Something similar to a sigh left his words, and it reflected against the emptiness of his eyes, exhausted and with a film of disoriented emotion as he turned his eyes up to meet yours. But there was his own signature to it; it was tender, reflective, gentle, wonderful in a way that made everything about him so utterly specified in that special nature of what he was that made everything have its own dressing of unforgettable signature of preciousness significant and relevant to only him and him alone.

You nodded, barely; there was no need for physical action when there was such a rich communication through eyesight. Your fingers wandered around the side of his ears, and he leaned forward as he reluctantly let the tender tracing to happen, and that meant the world to you in and of itself.

"Come here."

He did, this time; his body leaned into your touch, while his round cheek grazed on your shoulder. Your hands pressed against the whisky stains of his clothes, allowing your breath to gently meet his skin.

And then, the most tender thing; he let out his own soft, considerable hums in response to the gradual rhythm of your bodies swaying together.

"Would too. Presumably if I was in the mood."

"Would what?"

A soft pause of his rhythm of that drunken state; alden, soft and profound voice that held more layers than you would ever know.

"Let you talk to me like this."

You paused as you took in the words, understanding the full meaning of what he was referring to. Your body relaxed against his own, and you felt something in your release that had previously been tinted on an edge of anticipation that you hadn't realized had been paralzying you.

There was nothing except for the rhythm of him in your arms, and the loud crash, muttering, and noise that came from the party behind was now dulling to a fog that concerned neither of you of importance. His snout was pressed gently on your shoulder, and the weight of his body and the soft plush of it would have been enough for your eyes to roll back while you felt an execute of spiritual energy and richness overcome you in response to the softness of the almost maddening allure that came from holding him, being attracted to him.

Him being your physical type was only the start; the combination of being in love with what he was had the knowing curve of his flaws, statements, the messages and lines of his heart and the twisted quirks and humors of what was relevant to him specifically, and it was enough to push you to a full ache that made your entire body feel alive with a richness so specific, so precious, that you knew outside of this everything was lesser, and to forget the feeling was to forget the most exalted and worthwhile connection of being human; loving another to a full and unconditional competition, something that was still drawing its door open to you continuously, and you still testing to see as and what that was.

"You tell me when you want to go," you whispered against the side of his ear. For all the explosive words and comebacks he had come up with that night, there was now nothing except for a drunken hum, still executing that suggestion of intelligence and of awareness, but the soppy sleepiness of his drunken nature was currently taking the forefront of his senses, and it was just as heaven inducing to hold him as much as you would have thought; aching and gentle with an endless soothing richness bringing validity that all that romanticism that was so easily throttled and invalidated by yourself and everyone else was, in fact, a true and resounding thing as much as you had always suspected, but had only seen through quick glimpses on screen through dirty and blotted windows, through the quick and slung lazy arm of the shoulders of people rushing by while your blurry eyes had followed them.

It was only achieved in the literal capacity of the puzzle fit piece that was one another, physically and emotionally your type and fulfilling ends to your own that was only especially fulfilled by the ends of him and what made him.

"Don't…count on it. I'll just let my body do the talking, as and alike to the same way anyone who knows how to handle being drunk smoothly does."

There was a gentle grace to the rotation of the rhythm of the inches of your body as they swayed togehter, your hand rested on the side of his love handles; they were just as warm and just as addicting to love on as much as you had expected.

"You sweet thing."

Your voice was soft, reflective, a certain mourning surrounding it- if only for the ache of how bittersweet it was to love someone, to have found that admiration of gentleness that he poured and drew out of you just by how he was; the best of all things. "Why did it have to take several beers-"

"Don't forget the cousins gin, vodka, and a hint of whiskey and wine to wash it all down."

"-for you to get to this point?"

"I don't…didn't need anything except to be left alone. It's easier."

His head lifted, understanding that the detachment was only temporarily as he curved his lips up and looked at you with that expression that was both gentle and cocky in that way he naturally carried as he met your eyes heavily lidded drunkenness over his eyes as he swayed and the worn look on his skin was deepening in the crevices of his skin.
"But alcohol helps me to be able to achieve that. And we all know how easily I can get someone to smash me if I just wanted a distraction for the night. How easy is it to find some lost, foggy mind woman, impaired in not knowing what she wants so that we can both feel free, physical and otherwise, for one night. That's how the chain of line works; you find someone who's lower than you, whether socially, intelligently, charismatically, status wise, use that to your advantage to get whatever cheap validation from a stranger you need. It's a chain. People fall for people above them that the people above them aren't interested in because they're, well, above them. Most don't say it, but I'm pretty sure I have it down to a science when it comes to late night party validation. And it works, every time. I have human physiological down to a science. Especially my own."

"You're so sweet, for someone that says and believes and acts on things like this."

Bojack's eyes lowered, and you knew he was intelligent enough, even now, to get what you were lying out. His shame came in the form of an exhausted, dry shame.

"Well, what can you do. It seems to be the way that it is, all things considered." His eyes winced as he turned and looked over the woman. "One thing I won't deny is that it's so obvious that what we need the most is the one thing that's the most complicated and apparently impossible thing anyone could ever imagine."

You were already trailing in his general thought, but you wanted to hear him say it, to help him come to his own conclusion. Your fingertips eased against his wrist. "What's that?"

"Isn't it obvious? Getting along with people. The whole…love thing, I've already heard so much about but have never actually legitimately seen. And believe me, I've done it a countless amount of time, and I know what I mean. It's not a thing. Not really."

His drunken eyes looked around the curves of the bodies that were dancing in the outside, foggy laden space, hips pressing against one another, only a few numbers of them left in front of the low neon light of the outside open door. "How many do you think I could seduce in the next ten minutes?"

Your heart dropped at the way you could sense how he was letting go so quickly. You stepped forward, lips pressing together as you tried to reached your hand to his wrist, though your lips pressed together in tension of caution as your fingertips paused beside his wrist, stopping your hand from reaching out a few inches.

"You're sick, drunk, vomiting. That's the way you would go about doing it?"

"Exactly a good kind of state to start to find distractions." Bojack's hand curled on the side of his him as he turned and met your eyes, eyebrow raised as he looked you over. "You must be new at this 'Bojack coping with being drunk' thing. It's a classic. I have an eccentric way of dealing with this. Works every time. For me. Maybe you get it, maybe you don't."

"What I do get is someone who's avoiding any display of genuine care or affection, and it makes me feel crazy, seeing you do it to yourself; as if who you are didn't already do that to me enough as it was, although at least the second is in a good way."

"Hey." His ears lowered, eyes squinting in defense. "I've been doing this forever. Sometimes on purpose, some woman more than others, but regardless. We all have our little hobbies."

"Exactly."

Your fingertips traced on his ears-your hand went up to ease across the tip of them, almost on instinct, and a flash went over his eyes as his teeth poked while he stepped back, fingertips cramped on his palms as he looked you over. His eyes turned away in a conflicted unknowing as pupils dilated in something that seemed like unknowing panic. You took the torment in his eyes, the small dilation of his pupils as a sign to not touch him, and your hand cramped back by your chest, eyes dimmed as you looked him over, his teeth poked and breath uneven as he turned his expression away.

"And you deserve so much better, and you know it but you won't allow it, and that's why it kills me."
Bojack rolled up his shoulders, taking a breath, though it was small, undetected. "Well. You're a doctor on physiologically. Since you know so much, tell me more about why this-" He indicated his hand in front of you "-is better."

"No. Not this exactly. And I'm trying to figure it out, but I can't do it on my own." You stepped forward, your eyes turning across his profile. "You. You tell me. Tell me so I can know how to give it to you."

His eyes met yours, and though they were an attempt of being defiant, they were mostly distant, emotional, in the way he couldn't help but be. He was still swaying, though there was a newfound sobriety found in his eyes now.

"I've never had anyone wanting to hold me before." His eyes darted as he thought. "I've never wanted to be held by anyone before."

"That is a start." Your hand managed to reached to his wrist by his hand again, hesitating as you looked his dim thought over. "What else?"

"I didn't-" He sighed again, hands grazing his mane while they unitnerlocked from yours for a timid thought as his eyes winced, turned down; never had you seen someone so naturally graceful, full of dignified thought, troubled and human at once.

"It's hard to imagine someone tolerating you at your worst, and with some woman at all. In general. Do you know how many women I've dated?"

"But you did try it. And then you started where you were that morning, and you could have kept walking, but you didn't."

"Slept with? Sometimes it seems like the entirety of goddamn human psychology was met with those women, and, you know the weirdest part? The weirdest part was that it never felt like anything was actually being loved. Tolerance front their end at best, feeling used at worst-and it always ended with them saying all the reasons they didn't like me. And even if they had, I felt like I was always doing it out of some animalistic desperation of 'oh, maybe this time it will lead to something bearable.' And both parties ended up worse off. At best."

Your eyes were wet, dimmed, reflection from the light of the club as you listened to his layered emotional battlement.

"I can't imagine."

Bojack's eyes turned up to meet yours, dim troubled, and reflective, empty dry and cynical and rich with emotion at once.

"So why try?"

You didn't respond; you only kept looking at him with the look of your eyes that was connected to him in silent empathy. The bottom of his puffy eyes winced further as he gave a slight poke of his teeth as he gave a troubled breath, turning troubled eyes back to the stripper woman, all of which were laughing to themselves and turning over to him now and then through their weed induced and crack laden conversations, pulp lips and sharp eyes turning over their shoulders now and then to look Bojack and you over.

"Most of those women saw me at my best. And I didn't always even like them. Ghosting and playing games is fun when you have no faith in yourself, in liking others. Most women I just tolerate, or they tolerate me. Or maybe the classic bland compromise. Either way, you get it. Or maybe you don't. It doesn't matter. You're on the other side of this. You always will be." His lip pouted as his detached eyes turned and looked you over, ears lowered, hand coming to caress by his arm. "I"m sorry. I imagine you haven't been with half as many woman as I have. Or anyone."

You let out a laugh; half bitter, but not to him, more so just to the general detriment of the situation and the inevitable complications that were coming along with it due to the trouble of your paths and natures.

"I was used for my body in order to survive. I've talked to the men on and off, but it's always led to the same thing."

Bojack gave a small nod, his detached eyes turning to the stripper woman, and with a somber tone did he speak; "Well, you'd be surprised at how little there's a difference between that and normal dating. Doing transcatios to survive. Same thing."

Your hand grazed on his palm, and not for the countless attempt that night did your fingertips graze on the chubbiness of it; there was something about the softness of him, mixed in with the jaded intelligence of dark charmasia in his eyes that was of an unrelenting fasciation to you. You didn't think he would allow the intimacy of your hand guiding and raising up his own, but he did; and your hand found his, a gentle excuse for the purity of your emotions to meet the simple action of fingertips against brawny palms.

"Darling, you have this way of going back and forth."

He didn't acknowledge the pet name; he only raised a brow, though his eyes kept turned away from yours and kept with a distant dispiar over to the huddle of the stripper woman, as if to avoid too many unresolved emotions at once. There were certain elements going on in his face that gave away how he was breaking in his admitted timidity; his teeth were poking, his eyebrows were lowering, eyes empty, he was looking at you in a darted question with unspoken hurt through eyes but certainly exuded towards that wordless message of air that was the ultimate complement towards aching desire.

"Really. I didn't notice." He paused, then gave a soft breath as you noticed another small movement in his eyes that gave away profound emotion. "No, I did notice, I was just waiting for you to catch up."

You smirked. "There you go."

His eyes raised cockily, tiredly, but still with contentment as he met your expression."Right on schedule."

"It's fun to play off of you." Your hand pressed on his own palm and skin, finger threading on the plush inside of it. There was an odd, addicting combination between your dynamic where there was something relentlessly soft and precious about the feel of it, especially with the way it met the molded grace of his expression, but a jaded chamrstai of being fed up with the strain a lifetime of suffocation and mental illness with very little to any end was almost a graded edge to something that was so preciously soft that it almost seemed choking.

His left eyebrow raised further, white teeth seeking from his lip, and he could tell you agreed.

"Pretty fun to have someone smart enough to play off of. Once we get over the…" His hand pressed on his palm that was being cradled by your hand, eyes turning away in unfocused, disarrayed thought, and then a timid shrug."Holding thing."

Your fingers rubbed the edge of his wrist. "I might not be able to let that one go. And I don't think you want to, either."

His ears flicked, and they splayed for a few moments in thought that was wordless but still present. He turned back to you after a long moment of quiet thought."Yeah?"

You hummed. A simple noise from your lips to execute what you wanted to give and do for him, that was all. And that was, truthfully, all he needed to hear.

He didn't say it, but he didn't need to; his actions executed further from his secret narratives that were half read by you, half hidden into a strange twisted sense of melancholy and enlisted detriment of misery-but there was so much light and good there. You had never seen such a light in anyone's eyes the way you did with him, no matter how empty or complicated; there was a golden entrancement of sparkled light in his eyes that was guiding itself further to you, a certain enduring hope and strength even under that which engrossed and enfolded what was his pain.

"You have a purity to you, Bojack. A quality, and a desire to love and to create a family and to be deeply embedded in profound purpose and love and warmth, the way things should be. The worst part is that you've been rotting as a whole; the best of you in general has been rotting, especially the purest part of you that is unseen but so rare in the people you're surrounded by."

Bojack said nothing, but after a moment did his head tilt over to you as he looked you over, muscles on his face tense and his expression painted with a question for you to continue, tension cramped with emotion.

"You would almost be better off not having this side of you meant for family, for loving deeply and profoundly, for the want of something consistent, meaningful, and mature. You would rot with the rest, and happily, never questioning it once. But instead you're rotting, losing your mind and yourself, because you know what's lost."

"Oh, yeah?" He looked you over; not defiant or teasing, but rather with a soft look of inquiry in his eyes, if not consistently disbelieving. "You think so?"

"I felt it from the moment I began to feel you. The moment you gave me a chance to take you in. I can't imagine how tired you must be from the countless others you did this with, but-yes. Absolutely."

He had that rarity about him where there was an odd enduring fight unlike anything else you had ever seen; an enduring light of hope and soppiness, though complicated in its narrative because of how much he had had to endure in order to stay sane, alive, and how little it was seen by anyone else, if at all, and the culture that surrounded him daily outside of his own sabotage anyway that was demanding for him to be soulless, complacent, blind, foggy headed, and made even worse because of those who surrounded him.

Your hand braided with a soft tenderment against his cheek, back of your fingers grazing on his cheek.

"I've never seen anything like you," you muttered, and for the first time did it seem like the words weren't just being spoken and maddening tolerated by a tender and bewildering heart; but now with a new indeniable depth and you could see the change that flickered in his eyes at your words . "I've never seen anyone with that enduring light and life like the way you do."

"Good take. I'll put that on my acting resumes."

"You can try to take away the depth of what's happening here as much as you'd like to try. But we're both tormented and weary people now; the both of us have come to realize that there isn't much to life, or anything at all, outside of what we pull out of ourselves. And you bring out out an endless tide of depth, cut open something that is all I would ever need to come to and mold myself to be apart of. What else would carry either of us through every weary and heavy day until we go? The only way you could prepare for tragedy, and that includes day to day empty life, is to somber and prepare yourself and do the best as you can. And to make it as easy as you can with the gifts you've been granted. Why should either of us try to make it worse than that? "

His impossibly heavy and saddened expression, isolated with a depth in the way he kept his eyes down and detached, settled for pressing into the folds of your shoulder as he gave a somber breath. The jaded way he responded with that whimsical witty backtalk couldn't have hid that softness under his tone.

This time, there was no fight. There was no sense of resistance that came from him-not now, when he was stumbling and drunken with disorientation, and it felt so good to able to be held-to be spoken to with that warmth of your voice and the love laden words of your gentle observation.

He allowed his body to press firmly back into your own. His snout curved onto your shoulder, hands pressed on the side of your waist in awkward hestience, despite how clear it was that there was an understanding between the both of you that this was, in fact, resoundingly trustworthy.

Your hands pressed the side of his own fingertips and your hands squeezed the side of his own; but not before you took it in your hand and pressed it on your lips.

"Funny," you said with a smirk, while your lips pressed firmly onto his knuckles.

He blinked, timidly, tenderly, as his eys turned up to look at yours. "What?"

"You smell like soap. A lot of whiskey, but also soap. I wasn't expecting that from you."

His eyes lowered. "Good to know I look like the kind of guy who wouldn't smell like soap."

You gave a soft breath of humor, softly, although there was a hint of pain to it. Your fingers squeezed on his own hand and you gave him a soft grin while your fingertips grazed on his palms, his snout burning itself onto your shoulders, eyes dimmed as he leaned his cheeks beside your shoulder.

"I knew you were good from the second I saw you-I just didn't know how. It's just now to have specific details, is all. I've been wondering about you before I even met you. And, admittedly, I've never really-well. Had anything especially worthwhile, frankly." His eyes winced in thought as he looked in front of him in foggy thought. "I'm still trying to figure out what it is. The feeling. How to deal with it. And you may have to try to wait for me, too. And I'm..sorry for that."

There was a breakage on his face, an execution of genuine emotion not entirely unlike shock, though it looked more like troubled devastation. A car began to roll up beside the sidewalk between where the both of you were standing; Bojack's head turned up an inch from your shoulder as his expression lowered while he looked at the car as it drove forward and parked beside the both of you. Bojack gave a breath, this time feeling like a resigned reset, and your eyes turned as you looked him over while he indicated melancholic to the car-yellow, relfective from the club, a tan plump mole man with square glasses eased in front of his eyes and teeth poked, indifferent as he eased his body back behind the wheel.

"Your ride. You can still take it. Probably. I didn't check."

"Forget it." Your hands pressed further onto his palm while you guided him to you. "Come here."

His ears flicked up as he looked you over. "You sure?"

"Existence, no matter how anyone processes it, is just a reflective of all that has ever happened dressed up differently, and all there ever will be in what makes up life; just a disorienting rotation of everything that is a perception of what as once happened and will again, only with a new masl, a new face. The new experience is the same, just with ore toxic unexpectancy; not unlike tonight. I want to be able to make sure that I just enjoy what this rare fresh new experience, for me, anyway, feels like-a rare fresh experience in my own personal perception of it and to enjoy one of the few new experience without the dirty grittness that comes along with firsthand experience. You only get experience without the gritness from the stagance of books and other forms of media not found in the present, but not stimulating. You're giving me best of all of that, and in its entirely, and I want to know it more."

His eyes treamored, brisky bruning with some layer that reflected against the purple of the lights reflecting in his eyes. He stumbled forward to you, gently pressing his hand on the side of your wrist, stepping closer; there was that communication that he would either allow himself to be firmly treasured or whether there was too much abrasive and raw disbelief that it could ever be him.

But he fell forward. That was all he did- a simple fall of his body against yours, but it spoke everything he had known but didn't want to admit, and all because good things felt too far for someone like him, and then you-who had felt it in an odd way within seconds of seeing him, an odd sense of conclusion since you had started to memorize his presence and of everything of that of what he was, and now could feel his fight break, implode throughout the night-and then settle even further against your body.

He breathed heavily, then settled his body against yours. Somehow, even just the simplicity of his uneven breath and the way he panted against your skin was something especially intelligent and poetic, touching you in a way you never could have known.

Your arms pressed firmly against his plush form, and there it was-the act of embrace. Around you, the crowd continued to bounce right along with the rest of the noise of the mindless chatter and superficial talk that held no coherent value or even human truth, the same way all people did at those parties and even away from those parties, and the same superficial nature of a culture that Bojack had put up with for so long that was part of the reason for the separation from the belief that he could be that precious something separated from it-that it even existed in the first place.

"You know how it feels when everyone hates you no matter where you go and you just start to think you're a bad seed?" His words left his lip as he rasped in trouble, words muttered on your shoulder. Your hand pressed on the back of his body as you gave soft, gentle guides of soothing hums. "I think it's kind of gross at the idea of you…trying anything with me." A new emotional vulnerability, more for himself than you, entered his tone as he spoke; "Though admittedly, it's very clear that I won't do anything to deny it if you let me."

"Well," you turned your head to the side, pressing your lips to the top of his forehead,right where the white of his diamond met your slight raising lips. "I've never been turned off by grotquesty. And I believe the definition you're looking for is caring about you."

"No. I'm serious. This isn't some young man with low self esteem cliche story where the guy secretly has a good heart and later on it turns out it was for the better."

"No. This is life, and what makes it life, what people are always constantly denying, is that there's nothing protecting us, promising us anything; it simply is, and anything either truamatizing or wonderful and anything in between could happen. And we don't know until we try. We are what we decide."

"Then why are you deciding this?" A new nuance of emotion tone entered Bojack's voice as he spoke; and when you spoke his name softly, he turned his body away from yours, though his hands stayed trailed in your palms even as you gazed at you in pointed defiance. "I will destroy you. I've seen it happen. Not everything is a black and white cliche. Some things are just bad." His hands stayed laden in your palms, so lovable and gentle tha tit seemed to come from an entirely second source as he muttered the words on your shoulder while you pulled him back in;"I am bad."

His voice cracked on the last word, almost like a boy. If you thought that ache of that bittersweet longing hadn't already been there before, it reached its pinnacle now-and yet, in the most profound fashion now did you realize it would never end, only transform and become new, just as the both of you were now without even realizing.

"I don't know anyone who feels as much as someone who could paint portraits in my mind as easily as and as much as you." You spoke it, almost like a whisper, something only meant to be shared and understood between the both of you. "The fact that you've been twisted and thrown into terrible people and situations-you've always done the best you could. You did the best you could; and I'm so proud of you. I was before I even knew you."

A soft rhythm of your bodies continued, and his cheek rasied from your shoulder again as gentle eyes looked you over.

"Portraits?" His eye winced as he looked you over. "What, like the expensive kind?"

"It's like small portraits of an entire warm life together. Like I have your entire world and life memorized without even meaning to; the way you express emotion, the way your air carries itself, how you express your pain that for some reason paints these small images in front of me of love and-" You paused halfway through your words, and your words hitched as your eyes became somber, and you only gave a soft raise of your life as you looked him over gently.

"What? And what?"

"Family, Bojack. There's something that's executed by family."

His eyes, questioning and bewildering, looked you over.

"Why haven't you been telling me this?"

Your eyes turned down as you found yourself catching your words for whatever reason; they caught in your throat, and your head turned down as you watched your hand cradling in his. He continued to gaze at you, pointedly, and you could feel him trailing the question out of you just by virtue of asking.

"See what?"

"Yesterday, I was sitting by the pool, waiting for you to wake up, and I found myself watching the reflection of the illumination of the neon light. I found myself leaning beside the door as I looked over that profound view over the city and from the balcony, the reflection of the neon light as it caught against the rails. I had an image flashing through my mind-; your cocky air and your natural confidence that is also tender and alluring, and you sitting by the pool with a flash of this small, tender tan body as you talked to the girl."
"Girl?" Bojack's eyes fluttered as he looked you over. His eyes turned down as thought entered his eyes. "And she was-what?"

'I don't know how to explain it; but she was so-she made me feel human. She was bright and pure and the both of you combined field me with so much hope, profound purpose, a sens eof belonging. I-" You paused your you gave a soft shaken breath, fingertips still trialing beside Bojack as you felt his eyes look you over. "I know that weakness in life is longing or becoming attached to anything. That I shouldn't. But the way these small, fleeting images have made me feel; they've felt so intertwined with what I've felt with life anyway, what so inevitably happens regardless, that I feel like I will feel the loss, anyway, or the missing and gain of it, every hour, no matter what I do."

Bojack's expression looked troubled, intelligent, undertsnaing and soft as he trailed his eyes over you, muscles on his face treamored, handsome with that of which came along with concern and that vulnerability of helplessness, treading what he knew was out of his realm of understanding, and yet he wouldn't dare ignore the call of it.

"Ok. So."

"Your timidness, the way you get caught up in your words, the way people break you down so easily because they know you're them in the attractive and superficial way, but not in the heart, and anyone who's bad of heart always throttles anyone good. It's in the way you talk, and if I could, I would carry you for the rest of my life."

"I don't think there was ever going to be a time something like that would be said to me. I'm not sure I should hear it."

"Then don't hear it. Just feel it. That's all we need."

"We. Just to clarify-We. As in dos. Not uno."

Your lips grazed the tip of his ear as you leaned forward, lips grazing beside the tip of his ear. "Precisely."

All the other strippers, walking stripped tight dolphins, men in drunken ripped tight shirts and torn jeans stained in cum and all of them with drunken puffiness and red tinted edges of eyes, walked by. The world continued on in their swirled and distracted conversations that were more induced with sweat, sex, and alcohol more than their own thoughts that would led to conversations-but people were distracted and they were content enough with that, and that was all life was about; feeling good and staying busy with distractions that would be rememebred as a foggy mentioned tint of nothing at best, no one having ever wanting to be here, and everyone having succeed at not.

You had had your own share of these explorations; it wasn't that you loathed the culture, moreso that you had been so indulgent in it that it had reached the end of its tricks for you, and you were too firmly exhausted with the endless run of it, too marked up both in soul and skin to care for it anymore except for detached and disgruntled, ended indifference; and the brawny plump handsome carved sculpted manhorse leaned on your shoulder had that same extent of sentiment under his puffy eyes that suggested lack of sleep; and even more so any genuine sense of peace from the extensions of his impulsive affairs.

He felt not entirely unlike a boy to you, but there was surprises and charms to him that were an extent of a map that you would never understand, but love was there, deepened and infaucated in that warm desperation that only came from that ache of wanting to fall firmly into what he was and always had been-and how it had called to you specifically. And it certainly did. And, more than that, was there the inspiration for endurance.

"Life isn't hard, Bojack. We as humans aren't hard; and its meant to be that way. We're meant to love and to be simple, and to be content. And I want to do that with you."

As you heard the endless conversations transpass beside your senses, taking in the occasional word of something relating to the next project of passion, dressed in excitement but with a dead halted tone of an understanding that they needed to do this next thing, they needed meaning, they needed to use each other for the sake of whatever mechanical usage they needed to fulfill within themselves, their bodies and brains used as a usage for tools rather than a genuine connection for human spiritual meaning like the tenderment of the man drunkenly laden on your body now, you felt a certain kind of protection, a separation away from the culture of a species that had never been content within itself or ever would be.

The man leaned on you seemed not only full to the extent of his section for his own previously practiced determined towards himself; it was the marks of other people and the culture he had been thrown into that he had never been meant to navigate.

"You were never meant to be here," you muttered against his ear. "You were forced into a culture you were too tender to be in right from the start, and these harder hearts throttled you from the inside out until there was nothing left of you. They saw it inside of you, they knew it, and they took advantage."

His snout grazed a few inches on your shoulders.

"I don't think it matters. Anything I was I've become. And you can't deny that."

"But you know it. And I know it. And I see you."

There was a pause form his end.

"I know you do."

"And you're astounding, and you've been used and misinterpreted by other harder and smaller hearts for so long that even you can't see it."

"See?" He lifted his head from your shoulder. His fingertips clumsily pressed under his eyes, fingertips pressing under his dry eyes as he pointed to the puffy, drunken and dried nature of the emotion within them. "I can see just fine."

You cocked your head to the side with a slight raise of your lips. "Bojack."

He squinted, timidly. "What would that even mean if I did agree with you?"

"Honestly, the best thing; it would help you navigate better. Seeing what you are verses seeing what they are; it would make such a difference in how the world can throw you."

His eyes raised up in the attempt of stable thought, though the lowering of his ears by a few whispered centemrners as a man drenched in weed and a large suit hand his hefy arm slung over a sickly thing woman, and it gave away how he was affected; how he was still so tender, cautious.

"It would just mean that a small wall of perspective was broken from a lifetime of experiencing, and experience is more powerful than perspective-which I think I've made astoundly clear tonight, by the way. So, therefore, there would be a battle of telling versus understanding, previously building on the second which was more true than the first." Bojack's snout was dry, exapastered as he looked you over. "So, I'm sorry. But progression isn't that easy. And I know you're smart enough to know that."

Your eyes darkened in a way that was affected by a permanent endearment, one of which only came from the state of tenderness that surrounded everything you did just from taking him in.

"Even the way you talk in circles and self sabotage; you make it sound so thoughtful." You kissed his hand; he didn't trip away, but only watched you in a timeless fashion that only existed when separated from the world-that timid look on his face wretched and addicting and aching for your desire all at once. "But the best part is how fun and adventurous you are, unpredictable; you have this pure light about you. You are incredible. You just are, and I've never been so taken by someone simply by who they are and have it leave more of an impression or be more powerful than you. You ruin me. The aches you leave me with; I know I love you. If I can't love you and take care of you, I at least want to give you this; the eyes to see yourself."

His mouth opened an inch, then closed, and then his eyes chose for him; he looked away. "But I don't think I can ever see it."

"You don't have to." Another kiss against his diamond. It seemed pure glowing, in a odd way, under the reflective light."You don't have to be anything. Just be as you are."

His eyes were grazed in apology, puffy skin squinted while his hands were pressed against your hand, though even the touch gave away the soft glint of a permanent sense of what had been gradually being ingrained inside of him over the years; the narrative of constant guilt.

As his ears lowered and he looked at you in a timid extension of a something not unlike a boyishness of uncertainty, you knew you had never seen someone who was so dressed in an execution of innocence. Something inside of you ached; it didn't come from your body, but it was strong enough that it affected every which was that the warmth of heart flowed through your skin.

"That's never gone well for me," he muttered, lowly, somberly.

You smiled, a curve on the side of your mouth, leaning forward with another press to his snout. His head lowered, eyes timid, lost, apologetic; how they had dressed such an extension of what had been such cocky confidence before, you hardly knew.

"I'm not 'well', either, darling. I'm not anything you've ever experienced or integrated with before. We're both lost, irreparably." Your hand pressed on the curve of his back, feeling his rapsy mumbling of something between neighing and sighing against the side of your shoulder. "I'm not anything you've ever experienced. Neither of us are. That's the entire point."

"You've been keeping tabs on me, huh?" You could feel the smile in his voice, even as his expression was defeated, bewildered and dry.

"I know I don't know exactly where you've come from, or where you've been. But tell me you feel it, too; that feeling that we both know where we've been, in the ways that count, not in a superficial or factual nature. If I were to count every partner you've ever had, name them, or even give any guidance of your actual life-"

"You'd been studying for ages, and yet you would learn nothing." His voice was monotoned with emotional detachment, his eyes dim as he looked you over, and it was oddly refreshing, how straightforward he was being about his misery. "Not to mention that you'd know more than I do. Remembering your partner's names and who you dated-even that would be more than what I got out of it. No matter how much I went into it feeling the same way I did now. So, obviously, you can understand where my devoid lack of optimism comes from."

Your smirked, your lips grazing and resting against his shoulder while your hands rested on the middle of his back, your thumbs caressing on the back of his stained clothes.

"Your causality is adorable. And I love you-and everything about you."

He said nothing for the moment; there was simply the swaying between both of your bodies, his head rested on your cheek and the soft patterning of his mouth against your shoulders.

"I do feel it, by the way," he said, disquientely. There was a pause, a moment for reflection in his tender reflection. "And the funny thing is is that I've said that before. To someone else. Same sentiment, though."

"Does it feel any different this time?"

A pause from his end-there was an incessant weight to it.

"Yeah." His snout curled against your shoulder. "Yeah, it does."

His head twisted away from your shoulder, his eyes somewhere between that exude of cocky confidence and that deepened sense of profound exude between both of your eyes while one eyebrow was raised. "It sounds a lot better saying it to you. Like it belongs, in a sense."

Your couldn't help but feel something between desire and a profound allure overcome you from how he looked at you, with his eyes full of that sharp charasmia and that dynamic coolness of pleasantry that come from someone who was both profoundly tender and at the same time being able to reel the room in with charm.

"I want to know you," you whispered, your hands raising up while they gently grazed around the side of his knuckles. "All of you, every part."

Something lowered in his eyes, and understanding between what was in him within his conflict, and how it extended towards your own desire to know him further, with unrelenting desire and exdude for more, was at an ends of agreement. The both of you were tender, profoundly confident as you took one another in, and it felt like the most freeing and natural thing either of you had ever experienced; away from the foggines of drugs, trahsy low talk, the attahcemnt of consumption nothing to do with being alive.

His eyes turned away and there was conflict in his expression, and again; that unrelenting preciousness of an apology that wasn't needed.

"Uhm-" He kept his expression away, and you almost would have thought he had been slapped from the timid nature in his eyes, the sudden wounded conflict of his expression. His fingers didn't leave the spaces of yours, however; they stayed firmly embedded within them. "I could take you to the cab, anyway. Take you home, cuddle you in. The guy seems so asleep that there's no chance he's even mad at us for taking this long. Could help you…sober up. And maybe not even think or reconsider how this night happened ever again."

You leaned his hand towards your lips, gently grazing your lips against them. "I wouldn't want to leave you tonight for anything."

Bojack's head turned back to you, and the compelling nature in his eyes was deeping with something that almost seemed like too much of a desire for you to even stand it; if you knew what it felt like to go mad with desire, longing, you certinalty knew now.

"You sure? There's a cab right here, I'm pretty sure it says it on my phone-" He twisted his head back while he turned his head over to where his phone was poking out of his grye pocket, stumbling in his drunken stuperior while he tried to step over his feet."Oh-goddamit-why is it so hard to move? When did they make walking so hard?"

His frustration seemed burned by the heaviness he had already felt that night; you balanced him by squeezing your hands against his own while you tried to recenter and rebalance him. His black mane was even more splayed back erradicaly and his eyes dilated and and expression heavy and incessantly detailed with the continued wear across his features as he gave a complicate grumble just as you pulled him back to you. His eyes turned back to you with his expression still squinted, ears lowered as he gave an uneven, exhausted breath.

"I'm not leaving you." You looked into the details of his eyes again as he just managed the drunken swaying enough to meet your incredible ache overflowed you-demeaning, hard, yet a forgiveness of soft to its greeting. "You've ruined me, you know that?"

His eyes glinted in a self reflected exhaustion. He gave a vague boyish shrug, whipping his hand up as he met yours. "That is what I'm known to do."

Your fingers squeezed against the spaces of his hands. "In a way that turned me from whatever fake execution of tolerance of what was called a life I was greeting existence with before, and now truly feel like I found what was needed."

His eyes searched yours, squinting in a genuine conflict of confusion; or perhaps it was denial, or an intimidation of what of which you were starting to give to him.

"Sometimes those things tend to go sour, right?"

"If it does-it will be the only thing that was worth going sour for. It'll happen anyway, as I see it."

Bojack flicked his eyes down, as if suppressing his current understanding. "I'm pretty sure you're getting the wrong idea of 'sour'. It's not going to feel good. Do you get that? You're going to end up stumbling around like a drunk if you…drink..me."

"What?"

"I don't know. I'm just trying to come up with different phrases to get your womanly poeticness to understand and follow. Don't get sour. Not like this."

A lizard bartender shouldered past him, grunting his shoulder against Bojack enough that his eyes widened as he was thrusted forward awkwardly; he stumbled into your arms while he let out a sharp, raspy breath. A sickly tremor went through his body as he winced as his snout eased against your shoulder, giving a breath as he leaned his snout into your shoulder.

"Oh-god. No. No."

"It's ok. Steady yourself. You're fine."

Bojack's eyes squinted while he twisted his head and snapped it towards where the lizard had gone. "What is it with bartenders and their need to walk past at an ungodly unfathomable speed?"

"Don't worry about him. Just come into me."

He shrugged his shoulders, eyes still conflicted and hardened. "Not worrying about stuff like that is impossible. Especially when it happens every two minutes. Or less." He snapped his head over to the lizard, voice trailing and breaking only slightly through the crowd. "And it continues to be the most annoying thing to ever affect me in and dick me down in goddamn mankind!"

"Bojack, come here." Your hands threaded against his mane, and you started to pull him to draw him back in. His head turned and his eyes squinted, but he started to allow his body to graze firmly against the side of your hips.

"Into your arms, or just the few inches to your body enough to make everyone here comfortable?"

"For yourself." Your lips raised into a slight curve. "And for me."

But he didn't-not yet. He instead swayed with his hands splayed into your hands, fingertips grazed against your own, but a guard of resistance in his eyes.

"Have you heard what people say about…me?"

"The most recent one-yes. A black hole of a man."

His eyes widened.

"Who said that?"

"Some newspaper."

"You can't tell me that someone said something like that and not expect me to freak out until I know the headline."

"I told you so that you can know that I know. And I still don't care. It dosen't affect me."

"It doesn't affect you to know the man you're evidently attempting to court is defined as a 'black hole'." His eyes looked away from yours in thought as he gave a raise of his brow while he looked you over."I will give it to them, they are getting more creative. And possibly more..what's the word. Abrasive in the english language towards pinning me down of anyone or anything with coherent hope."

"Bojack, it's not right."

"Someone said it for a reason. They came down to that conclusion somehow."

"No, no, they didn't." Your fingers traced on his hands while you pulled him forward, lips grazing on his knuckles. There was dirt, whisky, several marks on his knuckles; and you wanted to kiss every one. You muttered something incoherent against his knuckles, a soft expression of fondness that broke through the loud noise of the space while the jumbling of the bodies continued along with the noise. "That's what they do, honey. They take one little string of a narrative and they decide to pick it apart and make it the whole thing. And people like you-sweet, incredible, gentle hearts-they get thrown along with it and accept it."

"I don't think you're seeing me right."

"And I don't think your head has ever been clear enough to ever get a chance to breathe to begin with."

He breathed, eyes turned upward while his his shoulders heaved inward.

"Black. Hole. Black. Hole." He frowned, almost in half thought, half disgust as he mumbled and teased the words. "The thing about black holes; they just suck everything in. And they become worse inside themselves until they get rid of everything and anything good. Because that's what holes do-they become nothing but bad because of other circumstances that made them that way, and they become even worse over a period of time until that's all they are. That's what you want?"

"Don't dress yourself up like this."

"Normally, I wouldn't. I'm not dressing up anything. Gross. Normally I would take the woman home, bang her up, have a thrown party in a little town and smack her ass and send her on her way-maybe fake affection for a few months just to have something to do. But I like you."

He winced, as if something had been snapped inside of him in and of itself just to say it. "I like you-and I don't know what to do with that. I don't know what to do with that except to tell you to go. I don't need to ruin someone else. I can't live with that."

He was breathing heavily now, as if the words were punching a pressure onto his chest. Your eyes were rendered wet while you looked into him; it was your turn to look as if something had been physically torn out of you now, lending into a deep conflict of awareness and unknowing of how to proceed forward, if anything at all.

The inch of the rhythm of your bodies were still swaying by an inch, and his head turned to the side as he started to stumble again, losing the very little balance he had in the wake of being cradled by you. After an awkward inch and pressing of his fingers while they grazed on your hips, his body leaned back on yours as he gave a grumble of a breath and rocked against your arms as you gave him another soothing mutter, pulling him in as you helped guide him gently.

The heaviness of his body was gradually encasing around the edge of your own, and you found yourself enjoying the feeling of his plush stomach and body pressed against yours, to say it lightly. It felt more like a fulfilled ache that was so deep, profound in its rich complexity that it almost seemed too much to be able to comprehend; it was one of those concepts that merely was, and there was nothing to do but to take it in.

"There we are." Your arms threaded against his body and Bojack took a rasped grumble, feeling the radiation of his body and the heat leave his clothes through the damp of his clear discomfort. "There you are, you sweet, precious thing."

He mumbled something raspy and incoherent. His lips were grazed on your shoulder, a soft pattern that almost exuded something in an extension of want of comfort.

In a way you didn't need to understand, either yourself or Bojack-you were taking care of yourself through the extension of taking care of him. There were stories in his wrinkles and in the knots and erratic display of his mane-one of which suggested a usual sense of attentiveness that was absent for the sake of sweaty and twisted impulsivity that took over him for the night.

There were pussy bloated bags under eyes that were both bumbling in impulsivity, mixed in with a sharp coherence for compelling unknowing that drew you in for the multilayered execution of insight, maturity, insight, and, above all else, a compelling story inside of them that would serve as the answer as to why was a rich feeling that came along with being able to memorize them enough that when you were fully present in taking them in, it threw you, made you ache, made you long, in a way that seemed profound and enlightening towards a grounding purpose; but more than that did it simply feel human in his own lovable flawed way. You would have loved him less, if such a thing were possible, if there was any way he had been anything less than what he was, in the sense that what was considered that which made him lesser had been taken into something that wasn't him, and somehow, what come out of it was something that was even more rich than you ever could have imagined; and the denial of it would be a cheap punishment for the both of you, the accptan more rich of an enduring reward than either of you could imagine.

You had never felt more compellingly human-something many lacked in regards to their suffering-as much as you did loving him, and although that part of you knew there was an extension of selfishness towards your approach to him, it felt too right, too profound, to ever dream of taking any other approach.

"Hey-hey, stay present. Don't get too in your head." Bojack slapped his hand, drunkley and with a sloppy casual exude the way he always did, against your back, thought lightly/

"Wouldn't dream of it." Your voice was teasing, though soft; every variable seemed like it should be soft in extension to him, even when bridled with his own jaded wit.

"Oh, yeah. That must be why you've been stopping in the rhythm thing. Women never stop doing anything unless they're doing that thing called thinking too much. By the way, never seemed to do them any favors."

"I'll keep that in mind." Your fingertips threaded back into his whiskey stained handsome curve of entangled hair. "And true, by the way."

"You see?" You should. I've met a lot of women."

"And slept with even more?"

"I don't know what even gave you the incentive to think that was a question that should even be asked, but, yes. You do know Google is a thing? Because they love to to put all my shit on there. Especially if I never did it. Boring low life losers love to talk about big shots to feel better about themselves."

Your lips grazed the side of the tip of his ear. It twitched lightly under your touch. If he ever could have been more precious to you for every new detail he was executing to you, it would have driven you to a higher sense of something you had never even known existed; and still you felt it, and more than ever did you want to go to it. The noises of the stripeprs were beginning to soften, the lizard who had tripped had walked between the both of you having disappeared into the street beyond recall. The cab with the mole man sitting in it seemed as if he was old and slow enough that he had no incentive to talk to either of you yet; his wrinkled eyes lost in another time entirely of a lifelong life.

"Did you see that lizard?" One of the woman cracked their voices to the other as their voices wobbled through the air, her voice uneven, messy and superficial. "Totally just did a one eighty jumping into that purple fog. What the hell was that?"

"There's been a long of them tonight." The next woman spoke. The area was now deprived of being surrounded by the crowd enough that you could hear their conversation. Your eyes followed Bojack's for once, eyes turning as you watched the dim of his eyes while he looked over the woman as he heard them speak. "Weird business type looking men coming and going, eyes looking all weird while they go around and creep people out. Probably incels, more than likely, dressing up as successful to get some for the night. Worst part is that it probably worked. Now they'll go home and consume junk all night and go to bed."

"Yeah, but-still. Total weird shit going on with those tight lipepd guys. Every time someone has left, someone reports that they have some weird goddamn fog around them. And they went around all night asking a bunch of questions."

"Like what?"

"Just a bunch of weird shit to skeeve people out. Asking if anyone knew where they felt the main source of energy and chemistry coming from, people warning random couples to not 'take their love or any valuables too seriously' because the world will destroy it. Like I said, complete weird men just struggling around and making it everyone else's problem."

You turned your eyes back to the direction of Bojack, who's still expression was turning between the woman. Your eyes turned up as you studied his expression; his eyes were hollowed as his expression turned down, distant and detached, and having a looking of something not understood by him, but certainly emotionally affected as his eyes lowered down in empty thought for a moment.

Your hands curled under his snout, and he turned his eyes up as he looked you back over, eyes still empty, and something in them seemed permeantly lost and chipped away at; but still did he meet your eyes as he met yours, the stangle context of the mumbling of the woman falling back.

"What am I, Bojack?"

"What?" Bojack winced, eyes trailing as he looked you over. You gave a small nod, and bewilderment eased across Bojack's expression as he looked you over, vague beuwlderment."You're…a woman. In a club. And we're having a time together."

He sounded somewhat uncertain, a clear distance from how he had sounded before.

"To you, I mean."

"Oh." His eyes trailed down in thought, and he gave a small breath and a shrug. "You're-" He shrugged lighty under your touch, shoulders meeting the curve of your hands; even that moment seemed lost in a wounded preposition of conflict that was so tender in how it was believed to be resoundly undeserved from it's source.

"You're here. And we're having a good time. And you are-" He paused as his lips pressed together while his eyes trailed across your expression while you nodded in encouragement. "You are someone who is someone who seems to be very open about what they want, and through that, for once I feel like I can be a lot more aware about what I want, if only for the fact that that when I meet someone who seems like they want what I do, it becomes so much clearer to learn what I want and who Iam thought that." He winced as he looked you over. "Why does everything need a direct answer? Can't we just enjoy this?"

"Do you want to go home?"

"Now?" An awkward, hefty nervous chuckle as he looked you over. "No. It's only three in the morning. Going home for me now would be going home to four empty walls for no reason-when I could stay out here with all this life tonight."

"But it won't be empty. You can do whatever you want with me when we get home. I'll-" You pasued as you rolled your shoulders, and Bojack's eyes dimmed as he followed your eyes as you turned them down in thought. "-You can make love to me-"

"Whoa." Bojack's ears flew down as he looked you over with a winec. "That is a lot-"

"-Or I can bathe and I can just go to bed and we'll worry about it another time. I don't care. But I do want to experience tonight, every night, with the trust of one another."

"I know, but-" Bojack's lip pouted as he looked you over, then breathed as he gave a soft reset, a solitary entering his eyes as he looked you over. "That isn't what you think it will be."

His words were unclear; giving you answers without giving a direct understanding of nuanced emotional direct answer underneath them. That, to you and whatever he inspired out of you, offered and invited you in all the more, either way, both good and bad, such as it was with the relationship with someone, such as one with yourself, that was meant to become richer the more it occurred through problems and flaws, rather than the extent of thinking perfection equaled virtue.

You had been waiting for him in every other form of other few interaction you had ever met, from the bumbling uncertainty of his personality and skin, to the timid glow of his eyes that were met with several people and of the changes and phases of his life you wanted to all meet. You had been finding bits and pieces of him dressed in other partners through your life, and now here he was, fat, vaguely wall eyed, nervous, drunk, insecure beyond functioning, depthful and profoundly emotionally mature; you saw all the virtues of wisdom, wit, light and an odd enduring ancient romantic, and all of them cal together into the same perfect balance of absolute adoration. Meeting and guidning into him felt like a celebration, quietly executed, only understood between you both, though he approached it messily; perhaps it was because he knew it was real.

You gave a breath while you felt the thoughts turn over as your head turned to the car, and your shoulders rolled as you eased your eyes over the cab. The pog man sat in front of the driver's seat, eyes turned forward, foggy and indifferent in the wear of his old age.

"I'll go home."

Bojack's eyes raised up, dry and detached as he looked you over.

"Yeah?"

"But I want it to be with you." Your hands grazed across his palms, and Bojack breathed a sigh as he turned his eyes downward and felt your fingers against his palm. "It's easier that way, anyway."

His lips pressed on your shoulder, and each one seemed just as detached as it was before, but just as executed with that tender intimacy of gentleness.

"What was that you said-a little while ago?" His eyes turned up as he gazed over you tenderly, ears lowered back as he looked you over.

"What?"

"The-uh, name, thing. My love. I think that's what you called it." His eyes winced as he rolled his hand in the air in a circle in thought, eyes wincing. His eyes trailed up to you hesitantly again. "Did that feel good to you, at all? That expression of-tenderness?" His eyes flicked up in thought as he gave a small shrug. "Whatever you want to call it?"

Your eyes trailed as you looked him over while you tried to untangle the thoughts that were coming over you while you looked into the soft insistence and question of his eyes. You have a small nod while the corner of your lip began to raise up, and you nodded as your fingertips eased against his palm while you looked him over.

"It did. I wasn't sure if you would enjoy hearing it."

His eyes lowered down in thought, heavy eyelids lowering downward as ears lowered in a thought.

"My love. My love." The muscles on his face furrowed as his eyes turned down across your body, easing against your eyes, but just low enough so he wasn't looking directly into them. "Weird."

He leaned his snout further by your chest again. He mumbled the statement time and time again with a reflective, disbelieving humor, the way he did with any given dressing up of a word he was thinking over and rolling through his tongue, hot breath lacing your shoulder as the words left his lips, as if tasting to your skin the way they sounded.

Much like the way you were holding him, the words and the meaning to them were foreign and distant to what he knew, and trying to cope with the idea that such a precious term was dedicated to him; or of even having such a response to it at all after hatred and dislike being his main form of comfort for so long.

And he was relishing it; it added a new gentleness to his lips, his eyebrows furrowed into a gentle defeat of exhausted romanticism that spoke of a tender heart long since desperate to hear the words spoken. "My love."

"My love." You muttered it against his cheek, your skin threading across his skin as you relished in the feeling of his brawny skin across yours; the genuine contentment of his rasped tone in response to yours. "Corny, maybe in the eyes of what it feels like with the jaded culture that surrounds you."

Your own tone-soft laced guidance to the safe place of where you wanted to guide him.

"No. No. That is adorable." His hands squeezed against yours. "I promise."

Your smile curved up in a slight confirmation of your appreciation towards his gradual opening. Your fingertips continued to ease across his mane, threading down his coarse hair while you thought over the moments of quiet consideration for the first time after countless confliction that came from a source that you could only begin to guess where it originated from.

"Are you ok?" Your lip turned in a small thought as your hand grazed across his ear.

He gave a soft breath, eyes empty as ears lowered. "If you only knew."

"I think I do know. Or I can guess."

He raised a brow, partly teasingly. "That obvious?"

"You wouldn't let me talk to you like this otherwise."

"Possibly. Though at this point, the room is spinning so bad that I'm not sure where I am, where you are, or where I'm supposed to be. If anywhere. Both literally-and..-
A soft breath left his lips, the heat of his breath easing across your face as his snout traced by your face. "-emotionally, I guess."

Something similar to soft admittance left his words, and it reflected against the emptiness of his eyes, exhausted and with a film of disoriented emotion as he turned his eyes up to meet yours after his soft confession. But there was his own signature to it; it was tender, reflective, gentle, wonderful in a way that made everything about him so utterly specified in that special nature of what he was that made everything have its own dressing of unforgettable signature of preciousness significant and relevant to only him and him alone.

You nodded, barely; there was no need for physical action when there was such a rich communication through eyesight. Your fingers wandered around the side of his ears, and he leaned forward as he reluctantly let the tender tracing to happen, and that meant the world to you in and of itself.

"All the more reason to stay in my arms, then."

Bojack winced as he looked you over.

"What's more of a reason?"

"To stay here, with me. If you don't know where this is going or where this will lead. I don't know, either."

"Oh." Bojack's eyes lowered in thought, eyelids heavy as his ears lowered and gave a shrug."Sure. Until you go home and pass out, wake up after my bloated bender and realize that you absolutely did not want to get caught up in what you think you did."

"I doubt that's going to happen."
There was a twisted conflict of timid nature of strain in his eyes, but it was shielded by his own attempt at whatever he was trying to protect. Ironically, belief in the terrible seemed to be his twisted chosen comfort."Perfect response to someone who will do that exact thing if you let me drag you down with me."

"And what makes you think that?"

"Well-come on." Bojack rolled up his eyes as he gave a shrug. "You're a homeless woman with nowhere else to go. Aren't you just going to end up reflecting what's around you?"

"Why would you think that?"

"I mean-" Bojack gave an abrupt and timid breath, eyes lowered as frantic thought came over his eyes as he thought it over. "isn't that what happened at all those drug addicted men you met before? You didn't fight against them, right? Why would it be any different now?"

You felt yourself strain- and Bojack noticed.

"I'm sorry. I don't mean to say you're stupid. I just mean that I know you must be in the habit of reflecting what's around you, is all. I don't want to be another unnecessary foggy reason why your life is the way it is."

Your fingers strained where they were cradling his hand-but, even then, you enjoyed the compelling complex distance between your personalities; and you were far from being anything other than an opposite mess of uncaring nature towards yourself regardless-and in that sense, Bojack's observation was correct.

But there was a balance there, and the balance it gave the both of you had an ache of softness to it that was gentle, healing, and wrought in a genuine profound chemesity of long awaited compassion, torn into twisted black eyes and the shield of distance in his eyes.

If anything-for anything seemed to be what you could get from this erratic mess when all was said and done- there was a part of you that was ecstatic to be able to memorize him just for the sake of it, regardless of whatever it looked like, or of whatever wall he tried to execute for his own comfort-or perhaps for yours, you didn't know; his intentions seemed foggy even to him. When he was in this swinging, unpredictable mood of threads of madness that he seemed desperate to cling onto, you were entailed and soaked into every coherent detail of it; for all accounts and purposes you did soak up every detail, as if your sense had long since been so deprived of it, and finally it had found what it needed to feel that grounding refreshment on every given granted detail he gave you.

And now he was losing his fight with himself anyway, that flowered desperate fight inside of him that came from whatever narrative he had granted himself for the sake of whatever fatal denial he had grown into over the years. He seemed to have welcomed the nature of the fangs with a deadly acceptance, and the timid gold in his senses was granting you an ache so rich, so heavy, that it seemed to take your entire purpose, and you hardly knew if it was good or bad; you only knew it was all encompassing, heavy, demanding, that he had needs that would take your every ability and time and would enwrap and entice and be dedicated to him; he was a child in that way, desperate and demanding of needs most couldn't grant. He knew this in his disconnected but sharp intellect, and you did too; now it was only a matter of finding out what you were capable of.

In regards to one thing you knew; you had, without a doubt, an unbridled desire to do anything for him you could, and all else in existence seemed to fall away into a simple concept of 'something'; something not needed, only a mere background of a distraction from that of which truly gave your existence anything that mattered; the simple act of knowing and of being known.

His hard attitude was failing, his sleepiness drenched in that denial of romanticism melting into a softness of acceptance. You watched it dissipate until gone until there was nothing left except for that gentle and rhythmic melody of the way that you pressed his body around yours, creating your own space within that otherwise loud and crowded room that had no trouble twisting a lost soul like this into a disgruntled and lost narrative of disparagement.

You kissed the side of his shoulder as your hand met the back of his head, fingertips threading around his mane as you guided him, gently as if cradling glass, towards you-that was the amount of delicacy of what happened when this level of preciousness occurred, and your tenderness executed fully around the curve of his neck, tall and graceful. As if you weren't focusing enough on his every innate detail, you could feel his lips raise against the curve of your neck as he was pulled in.

"You're smiling." Your observation; gentle and execution of soft tendernment.

"Don't get used to it. You sound like a T-Mobile advertisement getting me to feel good about myself so I'll buy a product."

"I would be selling the only thing I have worth giving, then." Your fingers threaded against his coarse hair. "Gladly, too."

There was another soft, gentle muzzle of his face against the side of your neck, and then a exude of defeat from his senses as he nuzzled his snout tenderly, achingly against the curve of your face."Yes. I am. Smiling, I mean. Go ahead, make a big deal about it."

"I'm perfectly content to just take it in." Your hand lightly grazed on the side of his mane, and Bojack gave a gentle mumble as he felt you caress against his body.

There was a long pause, though it seemed more like a stopped conderiation for the comfort of the large space of whatever he was about to act on next. The thing about Bojack was that he saw things a certain way no one else did, in a nuanced and compelling fashion, but he was jolted and suffocated in his own weakened timid wall of having been surrounded by black souls for so long-and believeing them until he became them. You waited for him, patiently and with gentle comfort attempted to execute to him, to speak what he wanted, in whatever tripping of clumsy discomfort he walked to get from where he was to where he wanted to be.

He was, after all, clumsy in that way-most especially in regards to emotions that he profoundly kept and held but rarely casted out, much less understood, and there was a thread there; thin and easily overlooked, but present the same, but it was hidden by a compact compound of complicated protection of the decided narcissism and unpleasant attitude, one of which you loved too; you loved anything that came from him, that he had dressed over his air over a period of time for the sake of protection. If no one ever saw him, no one would ever love him, and there would be no genuine compact of discomfort from either side-and from his end, nothing but suffering and emptiness.

But there was a inner confidence, a lightness of permission, inside of you, drenched in a compact of your own hope of how you approached him that you hoped would extend to his own. The fact of the matter was that there was no possible way there was anything he could do to push you away. No matter what he dressed himself up as, or pretended to, it was all from the ultimate source of himself; and you loved anything that was him. There was nothing you found more comforting, more softened, more addicting of a draw than to be towards his own inhuman discomfort, drenched as an act for a cry for help, and too entangled to be read by most, if any at all.

"You are full of surprises, you know that?" Your lip grazed the tip of his ear. "I can't quite catch you. But I don't need to. I just love you."

There was a slight inch of his face nudging your shoulder, and then a softly muttered, conflicted statement that stumbled from his lips from against your shoulder; "Ok. Ok. This is where we're at. The whole heart on your sleeve thing."

His voice was jaded, tired in exasperation of one who was too familiar with despair, and for a moment you felt your heart thread in a frozen defeat.

But, true to the statement you had just spoken, he lifted his head from your shoulder, rather than push you away the way you had thought. His eyes were squinted and drunken, unfocused and not quite doing the uncanny nature of his sharp intellect justice, but there was that inherent compelling focus there that could have begun and ended you at the same time.

His hand cupped your face-and then snatched away just as quickly. His ears lowered, eyes squinted, fingers pressed into his palms as they gripped against his skin.

"Can I?"

An ache went through your air at his timid uncertainty-combined with the stark contrast between his intelligent but exasperated air, it was almost too much for you to take; the sheer raw unbridled adoration.

"We were speaking a different language the entire time if you can't see that that was all I wanted right from the start."

"Oh-uh."

Awkward uncertainty took the inside of the conflict in his eyes, and then he reached outward, fingers threaded against your cheek again, though it snatched away again just as quickly, and again did fingers cramp into his palm. His teeth poked this time, expression uncertain, eyes protruded as he looked you over.

"Let me."

"What, show me?"

Your eyes as you looked him over spoke all Bojack needed. Eyes lowered, defense in his features as he looked you over.

"You do know I've done so much physical shit that I could probably write a book about stuff in the human body you didn't even know existed."

"Then what's the problem?"

"The problem?" His eyes squinted, hand guided on his arm, and he turned away, black conflict in his eyes. "I don't know."

"I know. I don't entirely know either. So let's figure it out together; that's what this is all about."

Bojack only kept his hand on his arm with his eyes turned downward, rubbing it gently, reflection of uncertainty in his eyes; and, complemented by the puffy exhaustion under his eyes, he seemed to be beyond of anything which you could find, and that was all the more reason why you wanted-in a more cautious sense, felt that you needed to.

You reached out your own hand, awkward at first, but urgently and softly sudderened against his cheek. It was full, round, soft. "You look beautiful."

Bojakc chuckled, vaguely sarcastic, a small light turning into his eyes at the words. "Mhm. Now I know that you're one of those people that are such loonies that they just naturally come up with stuff like that even when you're not as half as drunk as I am. You're the first person who would even say that unironically."

"Well-" Your shoulders rolled to reset as you gave him a small raise of your lip. "It feels like the best thing I've ever said. You have no idea what it feels like-the weight of an empty life. It's the heaviest thing I've ever carried, or will ever carry. The trouble of a real life-far easier. And you've given me that in the past week."

"I'm sure that will turn around. Though I'm glad that we both stayed calm and was able to keep it upright in the meantime while we played pretend."

He had that glint of teasing in his eyes, and he clearly expected you to play long. But you couldn't meet his bridled defense with your own when you knew it came from detachment; from denial of wanting to stay away from anything that could give him any real sense of relief.

Instead, your lips raised into a curve of tender exhaust of understanding. "It's not a trick."

"Ok-" He raised up his eyes in thought, fingers threaded on his palm; to take it and kiss it seemed impossible. It was so lovable, clumsy, so confident in its uncertainty. "Well, then, is it one of those things that's not supposed to be something bad, and then coincidentally becomes something bad later on due to just natural bad themes and patterns that implodes later on because of something we both can't prevent?"

A laugh left your lips, short lived, and more of an acknowledgement of his entangled stubborn nature.

"Are you going to be like this for the rest of the time you let me try to let me love you?"

Something shifted in his eyes. There was a sign of something that didn't seem completely unlike a defeat; he had found something that he thought would throw you away, the same way he had suspected it would.

"Like this?" His eyes lowered as his fingers kept by your palms. "Yes. Absolutely. I expect all of this and more."

Your fingers threaded on his brawny palm; you couldn't resist anymore. Your hands found the spaces of his and gently did they guide into them, and the most noticeable thing; he let it happen. His fingertips pressed on your own, a gentle accepting execution of threaded acceptance, though uncertainty wrought.

"Perfect."

He gave you a tilt of his head. "You sure?"

"I am. Because I love you, all of you-you drive me to an inspiration of something in the most astounding way with longing when you're exactly who you are." Your teeth grazed your lip while you studied him. It was almost impossible for you to believe there was ever a time you didn't know him; that you ever could have gone a day without loving him, memorizing the bags under his eyes or the detached look on his expression from impsulive bumbliness zestiness, from the gaze in his eyes of both sharp insight and an incessant tender lostness begging to be cradled all at once.

But exasperation, slight defense from a lowering of eyelids, overtook his eyes again. "I'm pretty sure you're doing that thing."

"What thing?"

"You know-" His eyes turned away, and your fingers squeezed on his to keep him with you. Action and word were well enough to execute how you felt, but it all felt like a hollowment, at best, if there wasn't that raw spirit of that aching bond in your chest of what he did to you simply by existing. "That thing. Making shit up about a person, feeling things for the wrong reasons, learning how wrong you were when you're already hurt?" He squinted and splayed out his hands in a gesture, as if to make a point; you took them back into your palm gently and loosely, enough so that it didn't feel forced, but stern enough for him not to go astray like he so easily did.

"If I have to go through one more time where a woman thinks she sees something and wastes her weeks with me and then reminds me how much she just wanted this other conditional bullshit-" He paused, tender troublement in his eyes, and a new sense of emptiness entered his eyes as he thought it over before he spoke; "I won't be able to stand it. "

"There's no conditions."

His head snapped over as he gazed at you pointedly. "There is always conditions."

"Not for you, no. Not for me."

"I just don't want you wasting your time. And I don't want-" He closed his eyes; the muscles on his features treamored. "-Me wasting my time. Even more than I already do. We're too…old for this kind of love. If there ever was any of it to begin with."

Your eyes searched his own, though the clear intentional consideration of lowering in his eyes was a sign that he was trying to do anything but be read.

"There's nothing that's ever going to change what I chose in life. That kind of love; 's love, it's the kind only certain people get." He shrugged his shoulders, exhaust consideration in his eyes that spoke of too many sleepless nights interrupted by drinking and whatever cruel thoughts followed him. "He's stupid. Sure. But the guy knows how to live. Be happy. Try. I never wanted to get married, but mainly because I never met anyone who wouldn't drive me crazy. Or saw the point. I couldn't feel it, and I think for most people, for whatever reason, some people are deserving of something things, and some aren't. It's the way it is. It would probably just end in something terrible, or maybe even something so irreversible that I wouldn't come back from it. Or..they couldn't. And I just never felt like I could carry that kind of love. That I can achieve something so…good. I still don't."

His hands threaded away from where they were rested on your palm, gently started to pull themselves away with a soft resistance. "So I'm telling you this now because I don't want to be one of those idiots I see all the time getting into and out of relationships and carrying out a cliche where we think we can achieve something we can't."

"We?"

He winced, head turning. "Me. I only mean me. You can get angry at me if you want for telling the truth. That's all people ever know what to do when someone is truthful."

Your eyes turned down, and, with a subtle execution of your hands to guide him back to you did you thread your fingers onto his hands, pulling them forward.

"I'm sorry."

His eyes kept turned down, emptiness in them.

"Me, too."

Your eyes turned down as your trailed your fingers against his skin.

"Holding your hands is so gentle. Soft. It's like carrying something in my life that's so precious that I never could have thought it even existed. The only reason why I know it does and that it's possible is because you're here in front of me now."

Your hands threaded from his palms, and you raised it up while you pressed your lips onto his knuckles. "Your voice is the most gentle, raspy and nuanced thing I've ever heard. I can't believe how lucky I am to even get the chance for you to tell me no. The way you say it, how you say it; it's all beautiful. You have this profound emotional intelligence to the way you talk." Another kiss on his knuckles, a thread of caressed fingers on his knuckles. "You're just wonderful."

He shot you a lowered look. His hand rested on his hip as an exasperated gesture. "A drunk horse man is astounding."
"You can dress yourself up however you want. You can destroy yourself, invalidate anything good about yourself, tell me any reason to not to see you. I'm in love with you, Bojack. I am. And the way it feels is so wonderful, so tender, that I can't ever imagine anything else that could ever be as wonderful as simply knowing you. And I can't imagine this feeling ever coming from anyone other than a resounding, wonderful person who has such a deep nature for good as much as you do."

His eyes looked downward, ears lowered. The bags under his eyes seemed as if they were deepening, granting him the most exhausted extent of puffy exhaustion that you had ever seen; and through all that, he only became that more more precious. There was nothing more resounding or anything that called to you more than his inherent irreparable broken humanity.

"Let yourself have this, at least. It feels so good to care about you. It feels incredible to love someone in a complete act of selflessness. To forget myself entirely. To focus on loving another. I can't imagine anything any better. And if what I feel is true and I feel like there's something inside you that can benefit from-" Your hands squeezed against his fingers. His eyes turned down as he felt your fingertips grazing the spaces of his hands. "Let me do that."

His eyes turned up to you, still heavy and dry, but accepting as he looked you over. He squinted in an uncertainty-it was inherently adorable in its timid nature. "A couple of measurable hours. That's it. We play pretend, we go home?"

"For tonight. It's only one night." Your hands threaded on his own, hand caressing and guiding against the spaces of his fingertips. Conflict threaded into his almond black mixture of eyes, though there was an admitted warmth to it now; hidden, but glinting and coming out from the almond dark. And yet, with him, everything seemed like nothing but good; or certainly leading to the only thing people craved, which was meaning; the centerment of all life.

Your hand reached out to his face while your fingers threaded under his eyes. He winced at the touch, though he didn't pull away, but his teeth stayed poked as he looked you over. Your fingertips gently threaded under the puffiness of his eyes, guiding against it, expression soft as you did so. His ability to have any response to your tenderness seemed as if it was paralyzed in uncertainty. His eyes flicked back over to the crowd; some strippers still standing outside of the cracked open door as they continued to flirt and ease beside the men around them, and then returned to you.

"Look, If you want to roleplay things being good for a night, we can. I won't stop you. But I don't think it's going to be what you think it is."

Your eyes were seeing into him; he had never quite seen anything like the way you were looking at him. It seemed as if there was some mask on the first layer of what he was, and then the second; the part of him that had every complicated nuance, zest for life and adventure, charamsia and tendency for joy, a softly laden bridled romantic that spoke with patience that would love his partner to the end of his life if he had found someone with a good heart and decent intentions that was able to respond to his in kind.

"No. Anything with you; it could only be something that's only better."

His eyes winced as he felt your fingertips graze under his eyes further.

"Please come to where you belong." Your arms grazed on his body while you leaned him into your body; Bojack allowed it to happen this time; his body threaded and pressed on your own until his snout rested on your shoulder with a defeated breath. Your lips grazed on his ear, breath bridled and pressing against his cheek while your breath gently executed against it. "Don't let the noise of the world take you away from what we both feel. If you don't want full commitment, that's alright. We give ourselves one night to pretend we're not broken. That we can love. That we can have happiness and all those wonderful things. Babies, me holding you every night, taking care of you." Another guide of your hand that caressed on his back. "Knowing you. Memorizing you."

This time, Bojack simply fell against the side of your body. You could feel the full weight of him now, and although it was, admittedly, heavy, it was warm; true and comforting and the most deepened ache of tenderness you had ever felt. Your hands continued to caress his back, gentle exhaust from your end from the fight he gave you, but even there he had a rest for you. There was no fire in his fight that would ever be anything other than good for you; he simply was that resounding, aching good that matched whatever you were made of that made everything he was nothing less than that.

Simple, raw good.

There was something about taking care of him in such a way- an intimate way that came from something as simple as holding him that made it feel as if the act of the compatibility of the caretaker fulfilling its purpose through the one that needed to be cared for in and of itself was the healing natural birth between the both of you that was blossoming. It was a strange delicate conflict, trying to hold him; not just in body but in heart and spirit the same. For all his cockiness and his tendency to act better, Bojakc was, by all accounts, someone who was easily thrown up by the rest of the world that surrounded him. He never believed in his heart, not really, and as a result he would lose himself entirely until there was nothing left but cynicism-and even that was stolen and reflected from others.

He didn't clear your head; his issues were deep and foggy and seemed to demand all your energy, But he certainly did leave an ache of richness that was so profound that it did leave little room for all else except for raw, rich gratitude. You could never have any genuine distaste for any overwhelming way he affected you; you loved every bit, every effect, and every piece of what he was, and it was more powerful than any given passing by onlooker of a hardened glare, any of the cackling strippers, any black doubt that possessed your own mind of the future, any given agent walking by with their mouths talking at a speed run while they went about their wiring on their cellphones by their ear, already gone in some ways; their lives would be a reflection of desperate distractions with people they didn't like, robotic scum taking one side of another actor's wires who were doing the same thing and twisting it into the agent's own desperate purpose because they couldn't just be.

They weren't bad people; they were even worse. They were simply people, going about in their catty distracted natural selfishness to get through the rhythm of their day, some successful money wise, some not, but all a constant rot, and by simply being and following their innate natures, of which everyone did, they throttled easily influenced souls such as Bojack. And for people like you; never having existed at all.

Not only did taking care of him clear your head, but there was a certain kind of remarkable purity that came along with it that you couldn't comprehend, but you didn't need to. It was simply meant to be felt. It felt eternal, and by saving him did you save yourself.

The simple act of taking care of someone deeply and unconditionally, and in such simple ways such as the act of holding him now was the simple answer of that of which you needed; but it wasn't about you, not really. It never had been. And it felt so good for him to be at the center of your world.

"Loving on you feels especially incredible," you whispered against his ear. "It's like nothing else."

He didn't answer, he only nudged his face further against your shoulder, and a soft hum left his lips.

The people and their noise continued on, and his plump body grazed further into you. How someone could be so helpless, felt so tender, while at the same time having such a capacity for independence, you didn't know, but the love you felt for him only excluded all the deeper from the nuanced chemistry that was within him.

Bojack let out a whine, and you closed your eyes, threading your hands further onto his lower back. The world seemed to fall into a stale irrelevancy, as if there was a separation between what the world concerned itself with and what the both of you felt. The superficial, toxic noise of the people talking started to fall away into that of what it was; a dull buzz of nothing of people who had no answers, but would talk and walk for the rest of their life as if they did. It started to fall away until there was instead nothing except for that rhythm between the both of you.

"I know you can feel it, sweetheart," you said against the side of his ear. His ears flicked while they grazed your lips. "Don't deny yourself anything. Just let go."

"If I wasn't so drunk, I don't know if I could have allowed this." His voice softly reflected on your shoulder. It was sober in its tone, in the sense that he had that compelling heaviness to it that gave away a genuine sense of defeat.

"I know." A kiss on his shoulder. "If I wasn't someone who had had such a craving to have this and to love you without even knowing it, only feeling it and suffering for it thinking it never would have happened, I don't know what I would have done. But I think I was being destroyed by now being able to love you before I even knew you. I know that dosen't make sense."

Bojack paused for a moment, and then-

"No. But-"

"Diane, my sweet plum, I'll take you home. You can't keep stumbling around like this like a sick drunk!"

Bojack moaned, grazing his head further into your shoulder. You gently squeezed your hand against the middle part of his back, and then traveled it over to his love handle.

Several people starred as threaded his hand against the spaces of Diane's hands; they had been talking quietly by the car that was sitting on the street beside the stripper women for the past few twenty or so minutes. You watched her stumbling drunk, sick face and pale skin tripped over her feet as she began to follow him outward from the crowd and over to the car door.

"I'll be fine, . I'm just trying to collect myself after drinking so much." Her hands waved beside her, as if in a getsure. "What else is getting so drunk for?"

"Uh-huh. Yeah. See, Diane, this is what happens when you hang out with back luck like Bojack. You just end up having the worst parts of yourself come out! And what kind of part of that do we need?"

You felt Bojack cringe against your arms. Your hands squeezed on the side of his body.

"He's going to take her home and annoy her for the rest of the night," Bojack mumbled against your shoulder. "That's what she has to look forward to."

"I made the choice to drink. I made that choice, ."

"And why?"

"Because I wanted to! I was having a bad time."

closed his eyes, a clear frown on his face while the muscles in his features treamored.

"Diane, I need to take you home. And I don't want you seeing Bojack anymore."

"Good call," Bojack mumbled. "Good call."

Diane laughed, bitterness on the edge of the sound. "I'm grown. You can't tell me what to do."

"Yeah? When you decided to be my wife, you made the decision to compromise. That's what marriage is."

"His version, maybe," Bojack muttered. In an odd sense, you were almost grateful for the execution of the disaster that was happening in front of you; you could feel Bojack's appreciation for the warmth of what you shared increasing and deepening. His lips gently kissed the side of your shoulder, and you felt goosebumps go through your body as you shivered.

snapped his head over to the door from where he had come out with Diane a moment before, eyes rolled up while he muttered under his breath. The way you took care of Bojack, the rich execution of what you had and shared together, made everything else seem as if it paled in comparison to the way that you were lost within him and the care of what you had. He was a manchild of delicacy, and what made him who he was executed itself firmly into your own parts that were better off for loving him.

For somebody that was so damaged, and you, with all of your own issues that had brought you to where you were, it seemed that the payoff was that the both of you shared in an astounding love and bond together, the richness of it firmly executed through the depth that only came from long term suffering.

In this sense, it had never felt so good to have been guided by pain your entire life, and even everything that was bad with him wasn't bad to you. It had never felt like such a relief to something you hadn't even be aware you were fighting to be allowed to simply love and to be damaged when there was so much finalized reward to it. The fact that Bojack was so clearly convinced that it wasn't something that he should have-or anything he expected to get from anybody, only made you want to give it to him all the more.

"You do feel good," he mumbled against your shoulder. "Incredible, really." Another kiss against your skin.

You felt your lips curve up, and your hand threaded as it caressed against his back.

"I know that being cradled tenderly isn't your thing, or being called as such, but I know you feel it. This is my Bojack. This is the version of you I see. I love all of you, but it's so much better when you allow yourself to be the wonderful things that make you who you truly are."

"The version you tolerate, you mean."

"No. That, I know I love entirely. But this is the version that gives me a belief, a hope, that I know we both become naturally when we allow ourselves the belief to do so. You certainly do for me."

He was no longer in the state of mind to be able to give you his usual jaded response, but rather was there simply an acceptance now to the way that he was listening to your words. Your hands gently circled around his back, and you could tell that he had never felt this kind of love on any given part of his body; he seemed to jolt for a moment away from your hand, and then rested back into it.

His snout turned as he nudged his snout against your neck with a shaken breath. There was a certain kind of peace to the way that was deepening between the both of you, resounding into acceptance in that moment that made a solidified sense of healing between the both of you. It wouldn't last; it wouldn't be the same every day, and there was a sense of fight to it, but it was worthwhile, resounding, real, and raw, and even you were feeling a quality of faith to following the trail with it for as long as there was the permission that you both could do so.

He was now aligning himself with you; you could feel it. The relief that he felt for being known and being cared for with you was refreshing to the extent that you could feel his breath graze on your skin with a soft exhaust.

"I'm sorry about…all this," he said against the side of your ear. "I'm sorry that I don't know how to respond to how I..want to make sense of what you're trying to give me."

"Don't be." You laughed, lips grazed on his shoulder while you did so as you leaned forward. "You're already loving me so good. Let me return the same thing to you."

He breathed softly, snout grazed onto your skin.

"If anything-happens. Anything bad while you're with me. I just want you to know that it's not your fault. And if it gets to be too much-" Another tremor of a breath. "-You can go. And you don't have to worry about me blaming me or hurting you anymore."

You shook your head, still cradling him with your hand. "If anything bad happens, it won't be because of you. And we'll figure it out together. That's the entire point of loving each other, darling."

A shaky breath left his lips. "Yeah. Yeah." A small raise of his lip. "I would like to believe that."

"You don't have to believe it now. You don't have to force yourself to do anything, sweetheart. But let me walk with you. Until we figure out what to do."

He didn't respond. There was only that doubt, timid and uncertain, that grazed his air. How something could be so bitter in its heaviness and yet so good at the same time, neither of you knew.

There was a black devastation that seemed like it followed him everywhere no matter where he went, who he met or even how deeply he was loved, and you recognized that. But you knew that you needed to offer him at least some relief from that in any which way you can manage, in any way he would allow you to.

That was, after all, your own personal answer, and you knew that now that you had discovered it within his bumbling uncertainty and his dressed air of clumsy nature and drunken tripping stumbling flawed uncertainty; you would never ask or know anything better. He had and could stand on his own, but there was so much exhaust to him for that, and you wanted-needed-to help him through it.

"If nothing else, you have responded to misery and your life in the best way that you ever could, and somehow you even made it beautiful. You may have been put on this earth to suffer without any genuine relief, but you've handled it astoundly. And that's all you could ever do."

You continued to whisper sweet nothings against his ears-it felt so good, loving on him. Your hands cradled the side of his body, the most profound and gentle and natural connection that any desperate someone in that room was given that night.

And how awkward, how ironic it was that you were finally giving him what he deserved when so many people believed that he didn't-and how refreshing and rewarding and astounding it was to be able to give it to him now, though in some ways it felt as if you had come too late.

And yet, in an odd way, that most especially only made it ten times more rewarding and deserving, as far as you were concerned. No matter how many times he told you and tried to show you he didn't deserve it, no matter how much he dressed up his own reality with his jaded nature, he felt it, too. He couldn't rob the good away from himself. There was a twisted protection that he had that seemed as if he was trying to protect himself from that of which he thought he would never have, and now that he was getting it, it seemed as if it was particularly disorienting to him as it was melting down to who he truly was-that gentle and soft innocent soul that desperately needed cradling and to be taken cared of.

"What a sweet, gentle thing you are. It is amazing." You laughed, shakily, as your lips grazed on his ear. "I can't even wrap my head around it."

His mouth smirked while it grazed on your ear. " I think you may have drank too much to be talking like this."

"When I get you home, I'll take you to bed. I'll kiss you, I'll take care of you, and you don't have to be ashamed of it or fight it. To take care of you, to be worried about you and everything you are is a dream There's so much about the world that will try to smack everything out of you, and you've been through the worst of it, darling, from every partner you've ever had that only ever wanted to use you. Even before you were old enough to conceive of thought, you were drenched in pain. It's a miracle you can even think, much less be such a golden light of endurance. Every person you've ever met is trying to take everything out of you. You are so good. You have one of the purest hearts I've ever met. You've just been lost, darling, that's all."

"And make reckless decisions. Ones that I don't know that I'll ever be able to take back." His tone lowered, deepened as his snout grazed on your cheek. "I don't know how to be ok with that."

"The fact that you even worry about it- that's all you need to know."

"Is it?"

"It's certainly all I do."

Your hands squeezed on his wrists. "You're so good. You've always had such good intentions. You always have been, and you stayed so true to it as best as you can in any circumstance, far better than most ever had. You've got a good head on your shoulders. You are so gentle, so talented, sweet and so true to yourself and real, and in this world, and especially in this culture you live in, people love to hate on real. The world only punishes you for being that. But that's not your fault."

His eyes turned downward."It's almost impossible to remember that. If I could ever believe it to begin with."

"I know." Your lips pressed on his knuckles. "Every single person that's ever been able to see you has failed at being able to do that. Every single way any other person can destroy somebody else in this world with their judgment in response to circumstances on top of personal pain that they see in you-because you are truly so open and raw and honest, sweetheart. You just are, in every which way, and people sense that. They don't have your heart, and they quickly throttle you because they see an easy target, or they're intimidated by what they see, or they don't understand it. Or maybe they do, and that's the reason why they go after it; because they want something that you have that they never will. The fact that you can even conceive of being able to be who you are, that you can find so much gentleness within you or even try or care at all, not to mention the things that you have given yourself, is so speaking of your endurance. Of a heart that can carry itself through the most impossible thing-to stay even remotely enduring in a lifetime of being told it shouldn't be."

Your fingertips threaded onto his knuckles-a gentle soothing circle motion that felt so good against the side of his brawny soft hands. "Considering the enemies that have surrounded you, and of every which way the walks you've made in life that has always led to judgemental eyes and even more judgemental words, things that I can't even imagine standing hearing, and yet you still try so hard to be good, and to give it to people who don't deserve it. And time and time again, you only become more good, more incredible. I can feel it and see it within you. You're caught in so many directions, and right from the start the world has been trying to throw you. But I could feel it. You're still so sweet, even those that don't deserve it, even to the person that birthed you and damaged you the moment you were born you showed mercy to. You have one of the purest of hearts-you always have and you always will."

"Christ." His eyes, admittedly hardened, but with a surface of an exude of the kind of hard that spoke that something had been awoken in him, and he didn't know whether to feel comfortable about or disconcerted; but still was it awkward. "This place really did make you want to do literally anything other than pay attention to what's actually going on, which is nothing. Just partying losers enjoying their night. And you focus on me- a guy who has been doing much of the same thing."

"But I-"

"I am no a good man, especially to those who don't deserve it. Anyone who's known me for longer than you have would agree. Ask Diane if you wan to, she'll give you the easy version of it."

"I'll speak every word to you until you hear me. And I know you do. And you may dislike me for it in some ways, but that's ok."

Bojack's head titled to the side as he looked you over. "I am not disliking you for anything." His eyelids lowered as he looked you over in defeat. "I do think you might be trying to make yourself suffer more than you need to. And with the life you've had, I can't imagine why you would do that to yourself."

Your head turned down, fingertips easing across his knuckles as you thought for a moment, trying to collect the erratic nature of your thoughts. "I just want to hold you. In every way I can. Kindness, gentleness; it's all so simple when it comes down to love, and I want to give it to you."

There was a slight curve of his lip as it raised up, eyes lowered in a gentle exhausted end in his eyes as he looked you over."Maybe you already are."

He had affirmed that he was breaking down under the execution of his self loathing and even fear of what you would give each other. You felt something like a wash of relief come over you, a strange long awaited white go over you that felt like nothing less than a breath of freedom from what you had been waiting for.

There were countless other words of what you wanted to whisper to him, but all that mattered to you was that you could bring these truths to him countless times over as much as you could manage, as much as you were able to.

It felt like the most right thing in the world for you-to be able to whisper to him in every which way you saw the nuanced corners in his every air that had been unseen- invalidated, even-by those around him. Every word you spoke, every way you wanted to tell him how you felt and what you saw, was your own personal reckoning; but your benefit from it was only a bonus. It was all about him; it always had been, and there was nothing else that felt more true or right to you than to love on his inner scars; of every flawed inner boyish impulsivity.

He had been tormented beyond being able to recognize his own self, or even of any infliction of intention of what he meant before someone had dressed it up differently. He had been torn into being invalidated ripped until he could see no coherent well intended disposition in his air or recognize himself outside of the foggy perception of what other people had given him-which he listened to with timid pause.

If there was any cushion you could give him, any kind of protection from the bridled knives that were flung at him, you would have given him that, even if it only came into the execution of a drunken, snippy eyed and disorganized puffy laden defeat after a long night of disquieted rejection. He was a fired gift of enflamed life, jaded by the lack of purity he had been responded to within other people, and that sharp black intelligence of his air was what had both protected him while at the same time taken him away from himself.

"Might want to look away from the crowd. They're getting that wall eyed staring look. Not a great picture."

His whisky breath and raspy voice threaded onto your ear, and you felt goosebumps at his air while it grazed on your skin. He paused, body threaded against your hips in a gentle dissaure of hesitancy, and then grazed his lips onto your shoulder.

"Thank you for doing this for me. I would've had to stumble out drunk otherwise, and we all know that these braindead smuck would have taken it upon themselves to take photos and make it the highlight of this fairly dead night."

"You don't have to thank me. If anything, this is what you can give me, by letting me give it to you. There's so much about life and how people fail at giving themselves anything real or raw, usually due to their own failed natures that prevent them from being bigger than themselves because they think serving themselves is going to benefit them in some way-"

"Uh oh." A raspy, drunken chuckle, rapsy laden breath on his skin. "Here comes some spell talk from a disoriented woman."

You felt an ache and a smile curve on your lips. "I'd like to think there's plenty of time in the future to talk more."

"And also very correct. I will give you that. I've never met a woman who's so focused on being able to observe-and execute it into detail at the same time. It is impressive. If not a little odd."

"What else would you expect from a woman who was on the streets her whole life?"

Bojack's eyes lowered.

"That is true."

He lifted his head from your shoulders, ears lowered down while he gazed between your eyes. A immature, teasing glint in his eyes; and yet even there was there that depth. "Astounding how much time you've spent trying to make sense of a man who's done everything he can but to be seen and worthy of it. By anyone."

Your eyes searched for his own. "Whatever you have or haven't been, you're someone turned it into a beauty, Bojack, because that's what you are; you have a natural purity to you that was surrounded and drenched in black intentions of what other people dress as good. And it's taken me so long to find that, and even longer to see it when so many haven't ever seen you."

"Yeah. No one was ever particularly shy about excluding that fact."

"I was looking for inherent humanity, both within myself and in others. I never thought I would find it. I knew and I finally did in you-and you're like a layered story, Bojack; there's too much going on in you, and I'll never be able to fully understand it, but that's the entire point, and that's why you're my narrative that I keep wanting to see."

He raised his brows in a questioning fashion. "That's not the only thing we'll be seeing, right? I can take you home and this emotional shit can be thrown to the side for one night, and we can just-"

An almost timid shy grin, his eyes flickered away in uncertan exhaust drenched in superficial intention; but even that ended you in aching intimation, in an odd way. The adorabaility of his eyes were in contrast with the age and puffy wear of his features as he frowned an looked down in thought for a moment.

"-Enjoy this?" His ears flicked up and he turned back to you, eyes turning against yours in thought. "Same way that that's the only way we can ever enjoy anything, which, in my opinion, is living in the moment for the time being?"

His intentions at tripping away from you were desperate, and you saw into every conceivable crevice of how he was trying to hide from you-and even that hidden cowardliness seemed like nothing but an admirability that deserved all your intention and love.

You leaned up, pressing your lips onto his with a soft swift against his lips, and even that was a rich profound connection. You simply couldn't focus on any given negative with him, whether it be from the reflection of your rhythmic repetitive human natures or the unremarkable outside of your narratives to those that couldn't feel it; that was what the love you were feeling and beauty was, feeling it so truthfully and profoundly between the memorization of one another that any insecurity from within or any exude of the monstrous negativity from others was just that; irrelevance in the guise of that of which was true; for Bojack was truth to you, from the stunted childlike permanent naive nature he was to the way his body had been molded with age over a period of time, a permanent conflicted combination between both extremes.

"I would love to make love to you, Bojack. If you'll have me."

His ears flicked backward as his eyes widened, and then he realized, letting out a hum into your lips; gentle and rasped with his truth while it grazed onto yours. Somehow, even his voice was handsome.

"You know I never knew anything I ever intentionally thought was a bad idea would ever be good. It's usually the inverse opposite. Or just bad thought that turns into bad action, naturally." His raspy voice laid on your lips, low, handsome, drunken, layered. But more than that, profoundly executed and true, and his timid eyes eased as he looked back to yours.

"If nothing else, this past week with you has reminded me how-easy it can be to have an entirely different perspective on things. How the misery I latch onto can be so easily reversed with just a few changes, a few new people-or just one person. How simple happiness can be." His eyes turned as he met yours. "I'll spend the rest of my life being the countless masses walking through life with the same problems that are so human that everyone has them, and therefore ignored by the majority because anything common, even if fatal or deserving of help, is by large ignored by others. And I've allowed myself to be drenched and defined by my misery, feeling like it's this long, unfathomable and irreversible black but the thing is-it dosen't have to be. Not necessarily. And I'm still wrapping my head around how easy it can be, but-it does feel nice to be reminded."

Your hands threaded around his cheek, which had become more bloated with age, skin stretched and eased against your hand, and even that turned you into him with an ache of profound purpose of grounding romanticism.

"But you're such clarity to me. Such an astounding draw from what you are. If I could love you and feel that extent of fresh air forever that loving and focusing on you gives me-I know it's not that easy, but if we could."

The curves of your face guided onto his snout.

"I would never need anything else, not really. Maybe that's why I'm pursuing you. Maybe that's why I'm pushing the bounds of comfort to see if you can do the same. Worst thing about being human is that we're so delicate, and this world expects us to treat ourselves as anything but human."

"That is something that I wish you had never thought of. I'll be spending too much time seeing it that way now. Or, if I can shift through the amount of things you've told me tonight."

"Being human is terrifying-because we will get destroyed if we're don't have our needs met, and there are so many scenarios where we're taken from that."

"Not tonight." His body leaned further beside your embrace. "Tonight, I'll give your needs and have them be met as much as I can manage. I know it won't be much in the grand scheme of things, but-it's worth something, right?"

You could feel the way that his weight was getting heavier on you, he was clearly leaning on you and beginning to lean on you with a new sense of trust, and it was endearing how much he was willing to do so, how heavy and lovable he was becoming in the wake of his trust.

There was a sudden stumbling from his end on the side of your own body-his head graduating backward as his body abruptly stumbled around as he gave an abrupt grunt and breathed unevenly.

"Bojack?" Diane's voice trailed over from where she was talking to ; she had been stumbling over her feet and was being pushed into the car behind her as much as was able to manage. Her eyes squinted as her eyes trailed over his shoulder while she squinted over her askew eyeglasses to the both of you. Your head turned up from where you were cradling Bojack, himself currently entirely gone as he kept his snout eased on your ches, giving a shaky rasp of his breath as he kept his snout by the curve of your neck.

"Diane, please, get in the car." 's hands guided across Diane's palms as he tripped over his feet and helped her inside; or tried to. But her head turned over the side of her shoulder as she looked over to where the lizard man had disappeared into the stagnant light a moment ago on the street. Her eyes winced as her body swayed, and she gave an abrupt durken mumble as she eased her hands out of 's palms and began to stumble to the edge of the street.

"Did you hear what people were saying about the men in the suits tonight?" Diane turned as she looked between the both of you, brow raised. Bojack grumbled as he eased his chin off of your shoulder, head swaying as he turned his head and looked Diane over, even as you kept your hand by his lovehandles to try and keep him by you.

"Diane, don't worry about the small gibberish things people say just for the sake of trying to be in the know. More than likely it was just someone tripping, and everyone else decided to be apart of the dumb rumor that was probably just some druggie tripping.

'I saw it." Diane's voice was distant, mumbling as she continued to stumble her way to the side of the street. Her body was swaying, and was following with his expression furrowed, eyes turned over her as he began to walk his way behind her, attempting to keep his frustration to a minimum. "I saw the lizard going through a fog."

"Yeah." Bojack's eyes were lowered in exasperation. "And you also have drunk so much that not even your husband has to tell you where to go home. You don't think that's a coincidence?"

A bit of a hint of worldbuiding with the lizard man and the suits of people going around and talking about where Bojack and his Wife was; Diane mentions that they said this spfcially, Bojack laughs her off nervously as he tells her hes not married.

Connect Better Gone-Married-Cabin sex-to Naked, which transcends to the lemur party, Samantha birth and then She storyline

"Diane, it's not something to worry about." 's voice was stern and abrupt as he walked his way over to where she stood. Diane pulled herself away from him abruptly, arms crossed while she turned her head over to where you and Bojack were still entangled against one another. Her eyes dimmed as she looked the both of you over.

"I heard some stories going around. Something about asking for Bojack and his wife?" Her eyes turned as she looked over at Bojack, flare eased onto her expression as she looked Bojack over. "The words and the phrase was thrown around at least a few times tonight."

"What?" Bojack raised his brow, that dry expression on his features speaking of something that was far less than patient as he looked her over. "Where is the logic towards the idea that I'm not married in the first place?"

"I know you're not married." Diane had a slight flair of annoyance flash across her own expression as she looked him over. "That's not the reason why I'm concerned. What kind of stories or rumors have been spreading about you this time?"

"I don't know." There was a slight raise to Bojack's voice as he spoke, and his eyes flickered up in defense as he straightned and looekd Diane over. "Why do you think I conturbuite to whatever weird dumb shit people try to pull out of their ass?"

Diane closed her eyes, placing her hand on her forehead, then turned as she furrowed her expression and turned and looked over and down the alley.

"It just dosne't make any sense. None of them were on drugs or anything. They were all perfectly coherent."

"So what? Most people have a hole in their brains by a certain age anyway, Diane. Just by being around the people who do have a hole in their brains." Bojack gave a grumble as he turned his eyes over to your hands, easing his fingertips against yours in an aimless and frustrated fashion, if only to distract himself from his clear innate frustration. His hard eeys snapped back over to Diane while her husband hestinalty came behind her, hand easing beside the middle part of her back as she held herself by her arms.

"Diane, let's go back to the car. The part is over." 's voice was attempted to being eased and gentle, though his hesitancy was fully flared in his eyes as to whether or not he had any control. She didn't pull away entirely this time, though her did allow herself to be sullenly eased by his palm, turning her weight beside his hand as she gave a breath, then rolled her shoulders as she allowed herself to be fully guided by his embrace.

"Whatever was going on, it must have been something notable." Bojack's voice was dry, and the indifference and vague annoyance in his eyes were as present as ever as he watched Diane be guided by and over to the lazily slung open door. His dry eyes found their way back to yours as your fingertips encircled by his skin, turning his swaying bobbling back over to you as he looked you over. "I'll believe complete gossip garbage being taken in by random crackheads and nobodies, but to fool someone like Diane-that takes quality crap."

Your hands readjusted beside Bojack's palm, swinging them as the softness in your eyes turned back up to Bojack, gentleness within them as you met his. There was a wordless agreement to recenter yourselves back in between the rare peace of which was only inspired by the two of you-any relief Bojack had ever had in his life before had only been strung from clinging onto relief other people had given him. Through you, now, you were both feeling a strength of life that was built only between the both of you that was without clinging onto something else someone else conjured or someone invented; and neither of you wanted to lose that delicate balance.

"The worst thing about not being loved isn't the being hated part-it's not being known by people who could love you and never will know you." Bojack's tender eyes, relieved even though the heaviness of his eyelids and his worn way through life, turned down in thought in that tender fashion, pouted, adorable, uncertain. "That's something I thought of myself tonight."

You smiled gently.

"Should I have no hope that I could hear I had anything to help inspire it?"

"No." Bojack's eyes had a certain new light in them as his expression turned up as he looked you over, meeting your eyes with a new intention. "No. Of course you can hear that."

There was a considerable silence for a moment, and you could hear the rumbling of the car from the tires behind you. You turned your head down in thought as you watched the tenderness of your fingertips ease beside Bojack's for a moment, then turned your head over your shoulder and over to the inquiring pig woman. Though kindly, detached from what was happening around him, and patient, he had turned the small of his dot eyes over to the both of you, taking to looking over his shoulders as he had silently leaned forward as he looked between the both of you in questioning insistence.

"I know that time makes a fool and relieves all of us from all human conditions you two-but ah, I'd like to be able to get home tonight, if it's all right with the two of you."

"Oh, shit, are you still waiting?" Bojack's found had a new sense of kindness and considerability to it as his eyes widened, ears perked up. Your head turned as you looked over Bojack, and a slight new improvement enterned his eyes at the far easier and lighter confidence he could grant the man. A small confident smile ease on Bojack's snout as he raised his arms up and around you body; the much more causal and slunk sense of his body was now coming out fully as he raised up his eyes in enlightenment of that boyish fun side he had to him. His disposition took on something more playful, adventroeurs; and all things considered, you were glad, for the both of you, that he had had so much to drink.

"Alright, then! Time to go on home! Here we go.!

He tripped in the middle of the way to the car while he gave a disortinted grunt as he fell against you a little too deeply, and you spoke his name softly as your hands eased beside his chest while you laughed quietly, turning him back into an upright position.

"Thank you," you spoke, kindly, as you turned your head over to the patient and old pig man, who only gave you a small raise of his lip as he began to readjust his body and leaned back beside the chair, small black frams giving him an even more modest and mundane safe look-something both you and Bojack in kind could agree wordlessly was something tbat was vadtly preferred after the amount of impulsive and detriment people you had both been lost in throughtou the night.

"Lay down on my shoulder, sweetheart."

The petname felt the most deserved you had had the chance to call him all week, and as you opened up the taxi door all on your own while Bojakc grumbled with that duken detachment amusement, eyes rolled back as his plush and stout body was lazily strung behind the grey of the car seats as his neck turned back, mouth opened slightly as he allowed his body to become fully limp, stomach curved and rolled out as you began to ease your way inside and gently closed the door beside you, the windows tinted with the reflection of the various neon green and orange red light of the party as you looked over to the last of the murmuring strippers by the entrance; now only one or two, and the club becoming all the sleepier.

"Finally. Something comfortable."

Bojack's voice was somber and tender, his head naturally allowing itself to follow the guidance of your hand as he gave a soft breath, teeth poked as the wear of his face eased beside your shoulder, eyes closing as he leaned his head downward and allowed his cheek to rest by your shoulder. You had never believed being human could be so simple; the amount of contment, self fulfillment, and of being fully in the moment without worry of any other type of existence was fading entirely in the wake of the profound amount of intimacy you felt with him; from the plush curve of his body as it spilled out his worn and overdurken coat, to the wear of his features as his head titled beside your shoulder with ears flicked back; graceful, humble, clumsy, plump, and profoundly and endlessly human and lovable.

"Lie yourself on me." Your own contentment entered your voice as you eased your cheek on top of Bojack's head; no need for rush, neither inward or literally, but only the satisfying and profound rhythm that came along with the fulfillment of loving someone deeply and of having just the right amount of energy and meaning following the rhythm of time and your midn following the both of you in kind.

"Mm-ok." Bojack mumbled softly, voice rasped and lovable in its uneven charm that had more emotional quality of that incomprehensible something some people were just born with, that were overlooked by the majority, and for whatever reason, you were grounded with the ability to simple just see in the way it was needed.

"Please." You turned your head as you looked over to the pig man, his small squitnted eyes turned as he looked over through the rearview mirror and over to the both of you through the dust of the black night save for the dim yellow stagance of the light on the ceiling of the car, and with a small nod did the pig give you permission of agreement, and with that did the car start. The more Bojack's soft curve of a lovable form eased beside you, the weight caressed against your body, the more you began to fell a certain kind of odd feeling-not one of profound ease, promise or excitement, bur rather a soft trail of meaning that spoke of every day having something incredibly human and wise to it that would carry you both through every hard day until you died-the best to be hoped for in reality. Bojack continued to give his gibberish, incomprehsnuble breaths and soft words under his lip as the car rolled through the currently detrught city, nothing but lights of the stagnant yellow lamps and of discarded trash easing over your eyes as you watched them pass, and as the warmth of your eyes, torubeld and wretched, but insightful into the moment, turned over to where you saw the worn and tired, unconteional face of Bojack eased acros your shoulder, expression trouebeld and ears flicked back, unimpressive, worn and wretched, you felt a change of spiritual preception that felt as if it permantly abstained you from the world and its promised chaos.

As the car rolled on, the pig man not speaking a word, his small black eyes distant save for the occasional flicker of his eyes into the rearview mirror and over to the both of you, you must have fallen asleep with your head eased beside the gentle lowered tilt of Bojack's ears. Your body has been rotated onto the side of fully leaning against Bojack, his arm lazily curved and forgotten around your shoulder, his cheek titled by your shoulder and rasped breath fully interwoven beside your shoulde as much as the troubled features of what took him that hd claimed permission for your body to be fully his own casket in his troublement.

"About one more mile." The pig man's tone was kind, professional, and your blurred eyes caught the small but professional strain of his smile as he watched you blearily raise your eyes. Your head turned and the lights that were reflfected from the dim lights of the nightclub of the various neon lie of light had melted into the stsgance of the rich exhult of white light and yellow that came in from the large mansions of the houses that made up Beverly Hills.

Your body was aching from the stiffness of your positon, your mouth dry, and your arm vaguely numb from how it had bene pressed as a rest behind Bojack's head, the radiation of the warmth from his skin still easing beside your arm.

If there was anything about the weight of his body as it pressed on yours with a heavy weight that instantly made you feel grounded and swept into a reality that was full and warm with that rhythm of focus with one another and the reminder of what that bond had filled you in where there had used to be empty space of lovelessness and indifferent of apathy to the world, there was body and the heaviness of his own comfort that he had by leaning on you. As you leand forward to take in his expression, your eyes caught over his face; his true self was coming out, physically and inwardly, though the fully relaxation he had caught onto from being held by you. The muscles on his face were tense, his face drowsed in a full troubement that made him look unattractive by conventional standards, but the emotional journey on his feautres added on that love for someonet hat trancedned labels or superficiality that was what happened when someone fell in love with all the details fo someone's journey of something beyond just interested or tolerance for convenience. His stomach was protruded with his body fully relaxed, where previously he usually had a subconscious strain where he carried it to try and keep it inward, and he was helpless and troubled and worn; and that detrimental sense of warmth increased.

You gave a mumble as you brought his body further around the side of yours, feeling the way that his hot breath was sweeping through his lip as it caressed against your skin where his teeth were poking out from the troubled twit of his lip. There's was a sense of guilt, even in subconscious, something that gave away that he felt there was too much of him weighing on your body; but his eyes poked open for a moment at the insistence of your hand, and he gave another torubeld breath as he allowed the small subcicnious space between nothing and reality to be pulled in by your hand.

"We're almost home." Your hands caressed his mane, speaking to him softly.

"Home." His voice was detached, exhausted, as he kept his body beside yours, and there were secrets there that only came along with the lessons of focusing on individuality and the pain of it. "No. It's not home. It never was."

"Would you like me to stay outside, make sure that the both of you are all set while you get out?" The pig man's eyes turned as he flicked over to you while peaking through the rearview mirror, and you shook your head by default as you looked over to where the especially long drive way of Bojack, several miles at least separate from the rest of the neighborhoods, was beginning to sit up on your vision on that incomprehensibly isolated hill; your eyes turned up as you looked over through the spilling out of the yellow lights through the large windows, the car rolling up through the hill as it began to loom with the light easing across your features.

"We'll be fine. We've been doing this all right."

You tripped along with Bojack as you helped his body out of the car; his eyes were squinted with that still wretched human sickliness as his stout body tripped over his feet while he was brought out of the car, your hands guided beside your hand as he tripped over his feet, ears lowered, the true sickliness of his features from his consumption and his age now truly taking its toll and making his wretched face look more humbly human than ever-and that impossible warmth increased. Impossible as in it was unfathomable, how much detail and meaning that was stretching out in your life that was beyond anything that could be contained.

Bojack gave a sickly grunt as his out stout and plush legs attempted to find a foothold, his feet trying to find a square upright as he leaned on both of your hands; one of his stomach, the other on the middle part of his back, both creating a cage of support.

"You don't have to feel guilty," you murmured to his ear as you felt Bojack give a sickly breath. "This isn't me attempting to have dedication to something that's a chore. Taking care of you is the only thing that is saving me."

Bojack was too caught up in his sickliness to respond, but his eyes winced as he kept him half bent over, half sickly squinted as he tripped over his feet and made his way to the door, spilled open with the light that he had insisted to keep on to "ward off oncoming weirdos".

"Christ. Who has the lights on?"

Bojack's voce was wobbled and unfocused as he continued to give his sickly grunts, eyes barley poked out from the puffiness of his skin as he turned his head up while he was more pushed rather than walking towards the door. You turned your head over your shoulder as you looked over to the pig man, managing a small awkward wave, and the pig nodded quietly, and with that did he make his way into the night.

"Easy. One thing at a time."

Your voice was a guidance as Bojack's body kept clumsily wrapping against your own while feet tripped as he eased into your embrace. You let out a breath of discomfort as you felt his feet step on yours, but collected yourself quickly as you continued to ease Bojack over to the door, speaking a soft level of encouragement every time you felt Bojack give a slight wobbling grumble of something incomprehensible and then apology, as much as his slurred words could manage, while he tripped into your embrace. He stumbled around the side of the wall whale he gave an abrupt grunt and jammed his hand beside it as he gave another drunken clumsy breath, feet tripping as his arms slipped away from where it had been slung lazily beside your shoulders a moment before as he swayed beside the grey wall, body swaying as eyes winced as you released him for a brief moment, swaying body and winced puffed eyes looking you over as you kneeled down in front of the door and began to look under the matt.

"What're you looking for?" Bojack's body swayed as he looked you over, his sentence almost incomprheneible from how much he slurred his words by now. Your bottom lip trmebeld as you finished looking under the mat, gripped your hand beside the flash of the metak keys meeting your eyes, then slung it into your palms as you got yourself upright, your eyes turning to Bojack as he swayed and looked over the metal keys you swung in your palms.

"This." You stepped forward to where Bojack was still swaying; drunk as he was, eyes winced adorably and with disoretination and having that fogginess that came along with sleepy drunk, was there still a sense of quality grace in him that was usually deprived from most.

His worn eyes turned down, and he reached out a hand as it embedded in yours.

"Mh-ok."

He was clearly at the point of being drunk when he was no longer able to process everything around him; and for reasons that you knew were building up as time went on, you felt a comfort in the ability to be the thread to make him considerabed and someone, rather than an asset to others, and a slumped over broken back come the next day.

His body gripped against the side of the wall as he felt his way around the edge of the door, ears splayed back, eyes squinting as he kept his body melted towards the side of the wall, one hand guided by you. He was so pathetically helpless, openly flawed and tender that you felt yourself squeezing onto his hand, and an endearment that was beyond temporary but rather built on with every observation into that indescribable mode of something terribly human contuined to ease inward and out, inward and out of your preception, but never enough to not be there with a consistent sense of grounding.

Just as you managed to help him through the open door, Bojack abruptly swayed forward, fee tripping as he barely managed to catch himself on the floor. He said nothing, but only gave a soft squint and pout of his expression as he kept himself kneeled down on his stocky knees, turning his head as he looked you over, a soft glint of genuine lost bewilderment in his eyes as he turned and met yours while you kneeled beside him. Your met his eyes as you kneeled down to his level, his eyes unfocused and unpresent, and body still gradually swaying.

"Let's get you up, ok, sweetheart?"

He let out a soft mumble from his lips as he looked you over-or attempted to, until the muscles on his face furrowed while he pressed his palm onto his snout. "Feels incredible."'

"Feels incredible? Being drunk like this on the ground?"

You added on a small smile that could only come from one that was genuinely only capable of feeling in full moderation the quality of consideration for the someone it was inspired from- any teasing only a soft reminder of the consistent human gentleness of healing shortly followed from behind.

"Yeah." Bojack's eyes continued to keep closed, discomfort on his face as he rubbed his palm by his snout, rubbing his face against it. "Yeah. It does."

You leaned further forward as your hands found their place by his body again. Bojack took to ghosting his face off of his snout, eyes wincing as he looked in front of him while he gave a grunt, allowing his body that had been turned into a bubble of exhausted complacent begin to be raised up by your hands, arms turning out from his body as your hands rested by his side. You found your lips pressing by the diamond on his forehead, Bojack giving a soft breath of a swear as he felt it.

"Alright, darling. Let's get you up."

"I'm serious." Bojack's voice continued to gave that graceless, stumbling drunk wobbling tone as his expression pouted, his arm raising up while he tripped over his feet as he allowed his stout body to be halfway lifted by your hands as you helped him upward. His lowered worny clumsy features turned as he looked you over. "This isn't a bloody homeless stumbling over your feet kinda drunk. This is more of a-a-" He waves his hand in thought. "-sophisticated drunk."

"Sophisticated?" Your eyebrows raised up as you began to help him from where he was kneeled on the ground, himself letting out a grunt as he was still hadl bent forward, but was gradually being raised up, though his arms were clumslily entanglned into yours, his stout body halfway strung forward. "Falling onto the ground is sopshciated. I think I am learning a lot from being apart of the housed and the civil living."

"Ok. Ok. Not sophisticated. Physically. It's an emotional after party drunk. The kind where you're detached from everything in the world, and you don't need the nose surorunding you because you fall entirely into yourself? Whoa-" His low voice gave an abrupt noise as he felt his hefy body losing it's balance as he stumbled back beside your hand. Despite the weight, you caught yourself fairly quickly, Bojack giving another drunken uneven breath as he was brought back forward with your hands.

A soft hiccup. As you made effort to enure Bojack was upright again, he turned his drunken and foggy eyes back to you, body swaying. One of your hands enwrapped away from his body, your other coming to try and ease out some of the splayed out disaster of the coarse splayed out hair of his mane as your hands threaded against it; eyes turning over as you gave him a small smile with the intention to reground the both of you, and a vague reminder of softness.

"You're going to be like this throughout this entire thing, aren't you? "

His expression melted: there was nothing left of him except for a sleepy drunk that was rinsed in a delicate and stumbling calling out to be taken cared of.

"What entire thing?" He waved both of his hands out beside him as he gave you a dry raise of his brow.

You got another smile as you leaned forward, allowing your lips to press against his hand. Bojack's heavy lidded detached eyes turned as he felt your kiss ease on his hand.

"I was born to see just how incredible you are. That entire thing."

"I wasn't aware something like that could be measured into a concept of time known as 'entire thing.' "

He let out another mumble as he finished, eyes lowering down as eyelids took to becoming heavier as a detached disassicaotion overcame his features. He allowed his body his body to fall forward until his body was caught by your arms, giving another gentle mumble as he closed them and allowed his cheek to rest beside your shoulder while his feet stumbled as he was brought into your embrace. He gave a soft breath as he leaned his cheek beside your beck, curves of your body perfectly meeting around the soft protruded plush of his curves as he grumbled and leaned forward and into your embrace.

His disoritneiend mumbling increased, voice profound with emotional naunce even in his indigined and lowered state, and your hands took to caressed behind the long trail of mane behind his neck, allowing your fingertips to caress down the graceful length of his neck as he allowed himself to be, and to even posible feel, the way that he was gently being cradled around the side of your own embrace.

"Maybe you're right."

Bojack snorted, abruptly taken back into reality for a moment from the temporary fog he had forgotten into, jolting back into temporary foggy awarness.

"I'm what?"

"This feeling; of being fully and detached and away from the world. Fully within whatever it is we are. I feel it, right now, holding you. I have no desire to be apart of or to concern with the outside world. Maybe that's the way it's always been meant to be." Your fingertips contuiend to caress down his mane. "You are a miracle waiting to be cradled, do you know that?"

He only managed another disgruntled chuckle.

"Ok."

His was blunt, gone, indifferent; but hid body could recongizne where it belonged, where it was asking to be. An imagine came over your eyes as you remembered the familiar and a lower voice of Diane, the last you had seen of her being a clumsily and stumbling drunk as she had slung her arms around the neck of ; but she had taken to turning her narrow eyes over to the two of you even as she had been fawned over and placed in the car, a look of odd searching in her eyes as she had taken to looking between the both of you, and then with another few tender words of , his arms waving out and cutting beside her eyes as he helped her inward, was she pulled back inside the car, though it had taken a good long while for you to rip yourself away from her gaze as she looked at you; there seemed to be a distilled both warning and cursitoy there. had even taken to turning his head over his shoulder as he saw the heavy disconcernment on her eyes, though it seemed as if it was damaged with a certain kind of mourning in her eyes as she looked you over before had shut the door, and for the first time were you aware of just how much the black of her running mascar met the chilling personality of her eyes for the night.

"Why don't I take this stumbling lost drunk out to the back and to one of your bedrooms?"

"One of them?"

Bojack's eyes flashed as he looked you over.

"One. I have one. I know this house might seem snobby and fantasy and elite to you, and yes, technically that is true, but I promise you it's not the incomprehensible fantasy land you think. You can, you know-" He paused as his eyes turned down as he gave a shrug. "Get comfortable, and all that."

"I'm just trying to figure out where to go from here, is all." Your hand caressed the middle of his back, and your other prepared to take his stomach at any moment.

Bojack's eyes were still unfocused and manic in their dryness and whatever story of emotion was behind them that had created his narrative of his life, barley surviving his own drunken nature; but he was able to snap himself back into reality from the occasional foggy black outs that took over his small hautned eyes, and he took to turning his head to you as he looked you over with a soft flare of emotional prescence.

"Walking up the stairs is a good start, if I know anything about something to do with putting one foot in front of the other when it comes to getting to this point."

"Then let me take you upstairs."

His head swung over to you as he looked you over.

"Why?"

"Because I want to help you. Sooth you, bathe you as much as you'll let."

"What?" A defense came over his features, and he even took to slapping his hand on the one positioned to help him as his expression flared while he stepped back. "No. Weird."

"I know it will feel good. There's no one, nothing here but the two of us."

"Yeah." His handsome, delicate eyes turned up as he met yours. "How lonely."

"How much does it mean that I get to spend time with you. And I want you to know how safe that is. I want to learn how safe it is for me, too."

His eyes flashed.

"Sounds exactly like something that someone would say when they want somebody to go out of their way to take care of someone."

"That is what I'm saying. But I' not going out of my way."

"Really? Because to me it feels like you literally are." He winced as he looked you over, almost with a vague challenge as he spoke; "Don't you have countless things to be worried about? Where to go, what you're going to do next after this? After I-"

His eyes bulged, almost with guilt, and he turned his eyes down guilty and away from you, and his hands took to playing with one another.

"No. I just mean-" A soft heavy breath, and then he took to meeting your eyes again, though this time they were sadder. "You are not going to be here forever. And I need you to know that."

Your eyes turned as you met his saddened ones; his statement was one that seemed unargumentative, and whether it was a source form something that seemed like it would pushed you out whether he meant to or not from some emotional punishment form his end, unintentional, punishing him as much as you, or whether it was from the fact that his affection for you was exaggerated by your interpretation, it seemed to hardly matter.

You felt a black pit of rejection in your stomach, and more than that did you feel yourself firmly grounded back to reality and your palace in kind.

But it didn't show on your features; your lip only strained a bit, and had he been able to read your eyes; you didn't know if he did, but had he been able to read them, he would of saw a slight shift, but you couldn't read his just yet, tender and as intertwined with him as you were, to know if he could.

"Ok." You gave a somber nod as you kept your eyes firmly on his. "I get it."

"Do you?" A vague glint of challenge in his gaze.

"Let me take you upstairs, anyway. See where we go from there. Can we do that?"

Bojack let out another suckly grumble, but his body jolted upward as he gave another wince of his eyes while he tried to ease his body beside your hand. He gave a low grumble as he turned his burning, puffy eyes forward.

"With the way that you go out of your way just to help me around, that's all I need to know that you absolutely do need a lot of help, and quickly."

"Understood." You voice was gently laden in helping him forward as your eyes turned down and looked him over, soft laugh in your lip as your hands kept on his body. "But I'd like to be able to start by helping you, first."

Bojack's eyes turned a she looked you over, as much as he was able to through the puffiness and the wrinkled wear of his eyes.

"Request taken, then."

"Yoou think someone helping you would need a lot of help by default?"

"Absolutely." Bojack gave another sickly grunt as his head heaved forward, feet tripping as he did so while he began to step his way on the bottom step, giving a vague grunt of a breath as he continued to make his way up the stairs.

"You would think that, wouldn't you?"

Bojack's eyes turned as he looked you over, ears splayed back. "What do you mean?"

"You always know how to turn something that has anything good to do with you into a black twist. The worst possibility you can think of."

"Well-" It took a moment for Bojack to readjust himself in his disorientation of his foggy headed drunkenness, but he turned his eyes back up to the stairs as he grunted and began to step his way up them. He panted as he began to make his way up the stairs, a slight flare in his eyes, but the disorientation of his mind didn't last long before he managed to, if nothing else in the middle of the murky black of his disortenated headspace and eyes, collect himself enough to speak;

"Of course. That's what I'm for. Amazing, right?"

His eyes turned to you, and the emotional nuance in his voice was one of something that spoke of someone intelligent and depthful of their flaws, and in the way he spoke was there the most profound grief of something indescribable he was carrying.

"Maybe that's one thing we can work on together, then." Your arms eased further beside his hips, pulling him beside you as you began to ease him up the stairs, feeling the sway of his plump body beside yours as he walked up them, and communicating as much as you were able the tender care you had for him; how much you wanted to cradle that black dispair he had within him so deeply that embedded in the air; a pure heart, entangled into complete lost nature, and entangled within the black of what it had left behind of an unlived life he had a purity in just enough to feel how it corrupted him over time to not achieve it.

Boajck rolled his eyes towards the back of his head as his exhaustion began to overtake him, rolling his head backward all the while as he tried his best to keep himself together enough to lean by you; there was a sense of respect there, you knew that much, the way he was trying to keep himself together for your sake.

You reached up your fingertips around the edge of the back of his mane, curling your fingers beside the back of his neck. His mouth was hung half open in a sickly manner, right along with the rest of the way his body was now only just beginning to fall into the brink of the odd sickliness of what came along with being drunk; which was essentially the black sickly tremor of when he fell into complete unconsciousness.

As you began to help Bojack up the stairs, your head turned up while you watched the reflection of the blue light from the pool while it eased against the wall, you felt yourself remembering what had occurred before you had left with Bojack in the taxi. had just finished gathering Diane's swaying and drunken body into the car, and with a furrow on his features had he turned as he had heard the small and soft ease of way you were talking to Bojack; he was giving you the occasional low grumble of a breath now and then, incomprehensible, but that low rasp of how he spoke had given you the general idea of what he was attempting to communicate.

"Is he ok?"

's eyes had winced as he pointed a finger over to where you were holding Bojack, himself turned forward as he continued to pant and breath heavily with both of your hands holding him on either side.

Your head turned up, and you tried to keep yourself together in the middle of the worry you had for Bojack and the failure of which you were attempting to give him comfort.

"I'm going to have to get him home. Check him out, see if he's alright."

"Hold on," had spoken, voice surprisingly attempting to be at ease as he walked forward. He has taken to wrapping his arms around Bojack right along where your arms was slung beside Bojack's plush and sickly hips. "'ll help carry him in. Mainly because I know how much we rely and help one another through things like this, and it would be terrible if I were to try and take that away from him when he needs me most." He offered you a light wink. "Given that he has this nice new lady friend that you are, of course."

Bojack gave an abrupt moan; he was too sick and drunk for it to sound as if it had any genuine effect, but as his head turned up, heavy eyelids eased over his dry expression that spoken of being unwell emotionally and otherwise, you felt yourself snapping over to his body, whispering out a swear as you did so as you readjusted your hand beside his middle.

"I don't need any-help.. .."

Bojack's low rasped voice had begun to trail off. had settled for a light chuckle as he looked Bojack over, easing him even further onto his palms; Bojack's eyes widened, and then grunted as he was pulled slightly more upright.

"Please. You're going to have a meltdown if we don't help." 's ears had perked up, tongue trailing out of his wide mouth as he snapped his head over to you, eyes bright as he looked you over. "I'm pretty sure that he would love to wake up a passed on the floor like this." 's eyes rolled back, tongue swayin as he shook his head abruptly, and then gave a mocking grieving wince to showcase his theatrics. "Tongue hanging out, face totally wretched and rolling around. Classic Bojack stuff! The guy loves destruction. It's hilarious."

You had felt the tenderness of your face linger, though a bit bittersweet reflective as you had heard Bojack's pants, the way his body was turning forward in a sickly manner; and 's casualty about how often occurrences like that were. Something bittersweet had come over you as you thought over how sick Bojack made himself made you consider something bitter as you thought it over; the kind of both intimacy and pain that came along with knowing someone deeply in all the messy intimacy that made up real life.

"Hey." had begun to ease his hands away from Bojack just as you had started to pull him in; your eyes had snapped up as you looked up at 's eyes. There was a new serious somberness over his expression now as he looked you over. Beyond, you had heard the way Diane was moaning drunk herself from the car.

"Helping Bojack is only less than half of the reason why I came over here. Frankly, it's very clear that you can do it on your own."

"What is it?"

had given a soft hitch of his breath as he turned his head down to a small card of what was sitting in his pocket, and he gripped his fingertips against it as he whipped it up from the front of his gray pocket. It had the name of a swan woman, tall neck, eyes flirtatious, with her name and place of employment written across the card; she worked at a museum.

"I know that Bojack's business technically isn't my business." 's expression has been scrunched into a playful knowing as your eyes snapped forward to the card, turning it against your hand as it looked it over. "But I know that Bojack has a tendency to have a-drug addiction, if you know what I mean." He raised his brows at you in almost a playful boyish fashion, hand rested beside his cheek as he looked you over. Your head turned down to the card as you were handed it, eyes reading the words as you read it over.

"I think this might partly be a wirthdrawl." 's eyes turned as he took to scratching the back of his neck, watching as Bojack was abruptly keeping one hand on the front of the car as he bowled his body forward, giving an abrupt pant and breath as he kept a hand on his stomach. He turned as he looked you over with a brow raised. "I know Bojack has a tendency to go clean for a little bit for the sake of whatever woman he's trying to appease, and then tends to-" He had pressed his sharp teeth together as he winced and looked Bojack over, his eyes tentative as he watched Bojack continue to bowl over in his sickliness. "-I just thought you should be aware of how he is. If he takes you there in the next few days-and if there's any chance that all this-" He indicted to where Bojack was curled beside the car door. He then broke then tension on his features as he turned to you, chuckling, eyes bright. "Well, you can imagine that although Bojack drinks plenty, even he has his limits. I think this is part way drug withdrawl, and if it is, I know he won't last for long in terms of getting more of his fix again."

You finished reading over the short information on the card, then managed a slight nod, lips pressed together as you turned the car into your dress-then widened your eyes as you heard Bojack give a strangled and sickly breath as his stout body turned forward, your hands rushing over to his hips as you had kneeled beside him.

"I understand." You nodded abruptly as you had managed a slight nod over to , best and as confident as you could manage. "Thank you."

had chuckled lightly, placing both hands on his hips.

"Well, we both know that that name people were aligning around earlier were all just people trying to go under the code 'Bojack and his wife.'' His eyes winced in amusement as he gave another chuckle. "That guy. Who does he think he's fooling? He thinks because he's stringing on some druggie name outside of something he has no interest in as a way to be undiscoverable?"

"Uninterested in what?" Your eyes had turned up from Bojack as he had panted beside the car to collect himself still.

"Oh." 's ears had perked, and his eyes had enlightened as he looked you over. "Marriage, I mean."

The card was now sitting in one of the unofficial hidden slung over wraps of your dress, and save for the occasional way the material was easing beside your skin and through the fabric, you had hardly thought about it; except for now, with the occasional way Bojack gave an especially large and sickly shudder, his breath coming out uneven, eyes winced, and with the pain and the tension of it easing further across his expression.

But you didn't say anything as you allowed him to continue to walk up the stairs; you narrated to him, lowly, softly, your words coming out as an occasional guidance through the otherwise long meldoconly of the dim walls and the occasional peak of the reflection from the light of the pool outside.

"One step. In front of the other. We're almost there."

You kept your arm around the side of Bojack's own body, Bojack only managing the occasionally rasped from his lip, teeth poked as his eyes winced while he continued to trip his way up the last few stairs. Your eyes were taking to watching the way that his head was slinging back forward again, in contras to the way it had been slung beach a moment before, his head turned forward as he made his way up to the hallway now, giving another awkward grunt as he tripped, body catching beside your hand as his eyes widned, and then fell beside you as you caught him with yours arms from falling fully beside the ground.

"I almost wish I didn't love and feel you as deeply as I do." You laughed as you saw the way Bojack gave another sickly drunken grunt as he eased his body back forward against, tripping over beside his feet as he stopped on the other end of the hallway.

His head swung over, and he raised a brow in that dry, challenging way. "Why?"

"I feel like I've been grieving it my entire life-the feeling. There's an entire world and life that you've inspired out of me; and I think I always knew it, and I felt it every day of my life, but it was in the form of some bittersweet, mourning pain."

Bojack gave a soft breath as he turned his head away from you, but not with the intention to hurt you; only with a soft, disoriented breath from his mouth as his body swayed while he looked without seeing in front of him to the hall.

There's a certain kind of broken attraction to the way that you saw his inner intentions for himself; he clearly didn't care what happened to him, and there was an an entire detailed tormented world inside of the richness of his eyes that drew you in; whether or not you would ever know the true scope or beauty to it, you knew was part of the reason as to why you would keep pursuing him.

He was treating himself as if he was his own personal rag doll, and he clearly didn't care what happened to said doll, what happened around it, and seemed to have an agreement to his own indifference to his pain that was agreed with by the atmosphere that surrounded him that he had to adapt to indifference in order to not go mad from suffering, or of think it would be deserved for him to have something outside of that; especially if no one else did.

"I'd like you to tell me about your dreams one day. Your fantasies. Your nightmares."

"You're serious." Bojack's tone was meant to be dry; but there was too much tender and clumsy surprise in it. His eyes turned up, ears perked as he looked you over. Your were about halfway through the hallway now.

"I can feel how rich you are. How much life there is to you; how much life there can come to be for all life and lifespans. I can tell that you have this entire world of depth inside of you. It makes me ache with how rich and profound it is. I almost an't handle iit-even just to feel it."

Bojack gave another breath as he stepped forward; though he was beginning to find some dignity to collect himself at least to some extent, it was clear from the shakiness of his breath, the pain in his eyes, the wear on his features that he would be spending the night as the sick drunk he claimed himself to be; that he found a warm identity in, as one would with any trail of an activity that resembled warmth and light as the years went on, in any form it could be taken.

There was something tormented and explosive about Bojack; it was clear he was planning on doing something about the pain that he was in; something that came from so many sources that you knew you would never be able to quite understand, such as it was with a complex mind such as Bojack's. But it didn't matter how worthwhile and rich he was; he was only a number, lost amongst the hundreds of humanity, and his entire inner life would be unfathomably finite and lost to the toll of the world and is indifference to him, no matter how rich or complex he was. There was a tenderness to that realization; to know that for whatever reason, your allure and that impossible comfortable warmth with one another would increased tenfold for the placement and the eyes you had been given to feel that resounding sense of warmth and tha want to love and comfort him through it; his quality was something molded only for you to hold, and you felt yourself forgetting any other identity other than that in kind.

"I don't know how long your fascination is going to last." Bojack managed a few words just as you were beginning to enter the front of the entrance to the master bedroom, and his head turned up as he looked over to the bed inside. "Usually I wake up mumbling about the latest thing that annoyed me. The dreams-" He circled his hand and waved beside him as he gave another abrupt pant. "-They usually last only about two seconds before I try to push them to the back of my mind, best as I can."

"I'd like to be able to hear them." You kept the steady rhythm of being with him and the modesty of it as you began to help him over to the front of the master bedroom, your head turning forward as you began to help him inside while his eyes winced as he turned his head up, still giving the occasional breaths as he made his way inside, but the sickliness seemed to be subsiding for the moment as he made his way into the neon light room. "Maybe we both have to readjust a bit to keep things light, to compromise to make this something we can both get something out of."

"Yeah." Bojack's eyes turned up, part in secret exasperation, part in thought as he allowed your hand to caress the front of his black bangs as you eased your fingertips beside them while you grazed your hands beside his snout. He seemed detached, almost full of rejection, towards anything you could give him. And yet that bumbling complete sense of disarray of uncaring in his dry words and edge was part of the very reason why you're so compelled to take care of him, why you so desperately wanted to be able to give him any amount of being seen for that storyline of that niche richness in him, as anyone had, but you had been made to see his. You felt as if you had always been molded to see him and to be by him as himself and for you as an extension of the tenderness you could feel for one another for the rest of your life. Though he was a sickly, tormented man, it was clear that he had brought it on himself, and through the promise of the warm tenderness it was clear that he had never even so much as been loved in a worthwhile way once, connected to anyone outside of dull tolerance, much less unconditionally-and even less to the point that he even believed in the almost too soft naivety of the idea that there wa such thing as genine worthwhile human emotional intimacy and grace to begin with.

His response to your consideration and the tenderness you were attempting to give him was just as fitful as much as always, edged and clumsy in its acceptance, but you found yourself feeling an unofficial permission even through that; the way the both of you had been molded had opened up doors of an entire life where the both of you inherently belonged, your attraction and cartaking towards one another in rhythm with an allure that came in, then out, and back again; it simply was, just as the two of you were to care for one another.

With a little bit of extra help from Bojack's end thai time did you manage to give a grunt as you began to walk over to the edge of the side of the bed, Bojack letting out some vague rasped breaths as he was rushed over, allowing himself to be guided by you as he was rushed over to the mattress. You could feel the soft inward ways of what made him up; from the measurement of his emotional depth, the slowness of how he reacted to things in an emotionally considerable way rather than impsilvely, the natural consideration he had for what was around him and himself in a way most lacked. Your mind felt in whirlwind taking him in; you felt as if you were naturally seeing and feeling him for everything he was, and if you would ever understand him, it didn't matter; you felt compelled to guide and love him, and that meaning felt more than enough.

His eyes closed as his teeth poked while his ears lowered as he continued to let out soft breaths, head turned forward as he allowed his plush hips to ease fully beside the bed. His worried and puffed eyes, the lowered clumsy rasped of his breath turned up as his puffy laden eyes began to watch the way you began to busy yourself through the cabinets beside the bed, your body kneeled down beside the drawers as you tried to look for any signs of drugs.

"What are you doing?"

Bojack's voice came out tentative, questioning, and you felt yourself freeze; his voice was more sharp than you had expected, and you knew that meant there was a truth to the idea of him stacking drugs. Your eyes fluttered as you raised yourself up from the cabinets, taking to turning and looking over to where Bojack looked especially helpless and lovable; his stomach spilled, ears lowered, eyes trouebeld as he looked you over in something that was both guilt and a hidden layered question. His stomach was strained against the stain of his clothes as he breathed. Despite the fact that it was clear that his expression was dismayed and out of it, he was still slightly awake, even now; just not enough to build a full sentence, much less with his intentions behind it; but he knew you were looking for something he seemed inherently alert about.

His body was slouched against the edge of the bed, and whatever darkness he held in his character, you knew you found it more worthwhile to love it than it was to deny it in your case; he was simply made for your quality of what you had to offer, and whether or not he would take it, or if you deserved to give it and experience it was still hidden under eyes that knew by now in his life that everything was a matter of emotional judgment- to take the pain of every change and challenge every day until the human mind adjusted, and in that sense was the human mind inscrutable, though it certainly had its wear on every physical part of his body.

"Was just looking for something to help clean up and wash your face, is all." Your body readjusted as you gave him a small smile. Bojack indicated his head over to the bathroom door.

"It's where refreshment materials usually are. In the bathroom."

You turned your head over to where the dim light of the bathroom was meeting your eyes.

"If you want to skip the cleaning up part, I'm as comfortable with that as much as you might be able to."

His voice had a slight sense of emotional vulnerability in it; he had such a somber and beautiful voice when he spoke.

"I'll get it just for the sake of having one less problem for us to worry about for the night."

"Sure." A slight hitch of his rasped breath, your head turned to the door as you flicked on the light while you eased your body inside, eyes turning over the white folded towels, the fairly untouched bathtub and shower save for the occasional toy that Bojack seemed to have left out; as you stepped in, you felt an even deeper ache that came along with every small detail that made up an unlived life of one you knew could have been apart of you, feeling more like the devastating ghost trail of a life that was left behind in all of its meaningful and worthwhile richness, and in its wake; nothing but the aftermath of foggy devastation of something long since passed into the echo of what had been, or could have, though in the middle of the grief that came with something valuable did you hardly care to know the difference.

You gave a slight breath of relief as you saw the way a face towel was stung lazily over the side of the white sink, walking your way forward as you eased your hands beside the cloth; you knew that a fully body cleaning was unlikely for the night. You turned your head over your shoulder as you rushed your way back out after running the cloth under water, shouldering your way through the crack of the door as your eyes met where Bojack's plush form was now fully vulenrbale, old, plush, worn and unremarkable; the plush of his round stomtahc curved forward, the wear and wrinkles of his featruews deepend as he panted while both chubby arms gripped by the grey sheets, head turned forward, ears lowered, breath hitched.

"Lean back."

"What?" Bojack was snapped out of whatever thought he was lost in; heavy, and settling the wrinkles on his features into an even heavier consideration as his eyes snapped up as he watched you walk forward. His eyes winced as he watched you bring the towel to where he was sitting; but he gave a slight sigh of a breath of acceptance when you looked him over and indicated your head for him to ease his body back, and he did so with a slight roll of his eyes, though the sentiment was gentler and more forgiving this time. He turned his way over to the pillows then you settled your hand against, and he began to settle for turning his body over the mattress as he inched over to the stacked up two pillows that rested beside the back of the bed. The trouble didn't leave his expression as he eased himself backwards against the stack of the pillows, though the trouble and the concern in his eyes seemed to become more tender and self blamed the more he leaned against them. His hand leaned on his plush stomach as his troubled eyes turned down as he studied nothing-it wasn't until you made your way beside the bedside table with the damp cloth in your hand that he watched you and snapped outside of his own inner world. He gave you a slight charmatsic raise of a smile as he saw your hand fold beside the cloth, and you kneeled yourself down in front of him as your hands began to gently ease beside the left side of his bloated cheek. He closed his worn eyes as he felt the cloth begin to ease beside his skin as you began to pat the cloth against his cheek, and the satifcaiton, tenderly respodned, began to ease across his expression as a pleasure came over his expression.

"Whew. Did not expect you to be so caught up in doing stuff like this, especially after the night I just showed you. Fancy ellioquettee you have from where you came from. For a dump hole."

"I would attribute it to more so enjoying this moment to such a degree that any action about it comes naturally. To enjoy this moment in full, to be involved in it, not because it matters, but because I know time will pass and render it meaningless or a memory that's more baggage and painful than it is the way it is now; rich, lovable, worthwhile. I want to make it as wonderful and fully experienced as much as possible."

"Yeah." Bojack kept his eyes closed, and you could tell just from the way he was focusing on keeping his eyes closed and the way his erratic drunken grace was currently fully sober, that he was taking in every which touch of how your cloth caressed his skin. "I gathered that."

He was stumbling in intention with all the lack of care that came from someone who didn't care what happened to them, and was used to no one caring much what happened to him. You brushed the cloth against his cheek, then under his eyes, keeping your hand gripped beside the cloth and then gently pressing it on the white diamond that graced his forehead, then turned the cloth down and back over to the much more precious puffy ease of the skin under his eyes, your expression taking in the detail of how you wiped the sweat and dirt off of his skin while you eased the cloth against the film of the layer of it. The cloth gently patted on his skin, the grim easing onto the cloth as you did so while, and the muscles on Bojack's face gradually beginning to twitch in response, though they seemed like they were enjoying the interaction.

"You practice?"

His voice was pipped up, ears perked up as he continued to feel the way you were easing the cloth against the layer of dirt under the patterning of the cloth. You turned your head to the side as you gave a slight raise of your lip.

"Not with something this gentle, no."

Bojack hummed, soft and somber.

Your fingertips and the cloth settled as they paused under his own eyes and the bags underneath them; you had been trying to get rid of the dirt, but there was nothing but a black hue under them. The hue of the black was from sleep deprivation, rather than any physical embodiment of anything.

He was letting out particularly large pants now, teeth poked as the muscles on his face continued to tremor, but your kept the cloth under his eyes and against his cheek until you managed to wipe away any considerable remaining physical material.

"All set? Because I am more exhausted than I thought. Turns out no matter how many times you drink, you still end up surprising yourself on how much it knocks you out.

His clothes and skin were still drenched in liquor and the smell of sweat of other woman; you turned your head over to the bathroom. It would be a struggle just to get him from one side of the room and towards the other, and though it would be strange to spend the night with a body you were still learning that was drenched in such impsuliviety for the night, you knew it was another one of those undeniable invitations.

"Honey?"

Your eyes flashed through the slight light of the dark as you heard Bojack speak the same somberly; his voice was cut through the air as your head snapped as you looked him over at the romantic name that was so gentle and wonderfully dressed in his tone as he spoke it. He could tell, even in his drunken detached state, that something inside of you had been pipped up from the way he had spoke to you. He gave a slight timid breath, his own fear on his face from the sudden abrupt invvintation as your eyes looked over Bojack's; but after a moment of leaning forward did he wince, and his hand eased forward as his fingertips eased beside your cheek. His troubled eyes turned as he found at least some bravery in the timid vulnerability of his eyes, then settled to caress his fingertips against the side of your cheek, ears splayed down adorably in a way that drew you to him in his profound lost scattered clumsy humanity, fingertips gently threading against the curve of your blushed and delicate cheek as you allowed your face to lean into his palm.

There was a timeline between the both of you, and the effects of what you did now would feel good in the moment, and if you were to lose him, you knew that there would be days where you reminisce over how good it felt, empty days of devastation when it began to come over you what it felt like to have the loss of this kind of unconditional warmth again-and then eventually complete madness of grief when that true loss overcome you when you would realize that you would never feel this type of human rarity again, and as your cheek leaned against his hand, you knew that in some ways, you were killing yourself off for good.

But the grief and the love of him would be a release; that as the kind thing about grief. It released you from all responsibilities of complacency that sanity and just enough comfortabiltiy to endure life allowed you, and all you had known on the streets.

"Just keep still." Your eyes continued to trail across Bojack's own furrowed expression as he let out his own mumbled rasped breaths now and then, muttering his words as he felt the cloth pattering on his expression. "We'll go to bed and try to figure it out in the morning."

Bojack opened one eye, poking through the puffy nature of his skin as he looked you over. "Wait." His hand reached out, other eye opening as he gripped his fingers beside your wrist, pulling it down from where the cloth was pattering beside his skin as he looked at you with dry challenging eyes. "What is 'it'?"

You smiled at him, reflectively, soft tint of loneliness and empathy in your eyes as you turned and met Bojack's questioning ones.

"I think we're both trying to find what that is."

Bojack raised up his eyes with a vague roll. "Ok. But what is the literal definition of what we're doing? What tomorrow morning is going to look like?" His pupils eased across your eyes as he looked you over. "We need to figure something out. This grounded, focused feeling-I've never felt anything like it. And I want us to both try to fight to understand it."

"Do you?" Your eyes flicked up as you met his, and an odd fear eased across his expression. His head titled back for a moment, and he flew his eyes down in thought.

"I don't-" He sighed as he turned his eyes upward. "I don't know. But I think so," he added quickly, his eyes following yours when you turned your head down and gave a slight breath. Bojack's eyes dimmed as he looked you over. "I'm sorry. I know I keep going all around. I've just never had anything that actually made me care about what happens. And I don't know what to do now that I have. I feel this odd-protection, in a sense, of what I already have. Of what I know. And no matter how crappy or isolating it is, it's what I know. And I want that familiarity more than anything."

His hand pressed on his forehead, eyes winced as his troubled eyes trailed in thought. Your head turned up as you looked him over, and your fingertips clasped beside the cloth.

"Everything that you treasure, everything that you are currently, came from a situation where your ego faded for a bit, and you simply took things in. Is that not right?"

Your eyes searched across Bojack's as you eased your hand with the cloth forward to his forehead again, and you paused halfway as permission if you could place it on his face. His eyes lowered, heavy lids easing over his eyes, teeth poked. Without further gudience did you ease your cloth beside the age of his bloated cheek again, and Bojack eased his cheek beside your hand, eyes empty and lowered in thought.

"I built the perfect bullshit to keep me just selfish enough that I never had to take in the world. And I never had to worry about being apart of it. But-" He paused, giving a vague rasp of a breath, and his vulnerable eyes eased back up to yours. You gave him a small nod as you looked him over.

"But." The word you repeated back spoke all either of you needed, and Bojack's eyes lowered again as he slumped his body forward.

The more you focused on the simple rhythm of keeping the cloth beside Bojack's skin, the more he gradually began to look up over towards you, each time with more willing response than last, and though he was still panting from the walk up the stairs, the strain of his unhealthy body and even more his unhealthy mindset, there was a certain kind of clarity that was in his eyes now. As he looked up and forward into your expression, the muscles on his face furrowed into vague thought. You tried to keep the focus of your end of things onto circling the cloth beside his cheek, expecting either silence now, or nothing at all.

"Is it weird that I want to make love right now?"

His words came out as a rasped and hesitant request out of his breath, eyes vulnerable and timid as he looked up at you, and though the request had been spoken as something as a drunken afterthought and impulse, it was still spoken in a truth you could hear in his tone; and just as everything he did was, you could hear the compelling truth in it; both as to what he wanted, and to what he knew you could both gain from it.

There was a small silhouette of emotion that danced in his eyes, and it was just as foretelling and full of depth as much as you took in everything that was compelling about him. Even with all of your attempt at trying to calm and dissuade what your entire life had been so far, to unlearn the detached abrasive cold of your life in order to at least try to learn the warmth of what his air gave you; the stimulation of your stories together leading to a new remarkable sense of life that was compelled by your previous experiences to bring the spark of what you shared with one another, you were finding yourself still taking away in an almost manic sense of what you was giving you; and it was impossible to turn away from the amount of compelling need that you had being into him and the inherent sense it made, and the maddening inherent understanding that came from turning away form it now and into the enslavement of emptiness; of how little sense that made, and how little you would tolerate it now.

"Ok, darling."

His expression took in a new enlightenment as his ears perked, eyes turning as he looked you over.

"Really?"

A slight laugh leaving your lips. Your hands slowly started to graze around his back, a soft rhythm from the bottom of his back and up towards his neck. You turned your head over to the side of the bedside table, easing the cloth beside the bed as you released it. Bojack's eyes followed yours, expression teaming with life and question as his pout followed yours as your hands eased beside his arms.

"There's nothing I want to do more right now than to make love to you. I don't know if I can handle it, though, and I wouldn't want to trick either of us or sombering myself into thinking I can."

His eyes winced as he looked you over. "Why?

"There's a certain grief to the way I love you. It's almost too heavy-and more than that is there too much loss." Your eyes began to burn as you turned your eyes across his expression while you kept your hands eased beside his arms. "It almost feels otherworldly, in a sense. It always has."

"I get that." His eyes turned as he looked you over, ears splayed down. "I feel it, too." He paused for a moment as he felt your hands pause beside caressing his arm. "But we aren't going to let that stop us, are we?"

This time, you weren't the one that leaned forward to try and slew physical intimacy between emotional. Though Bojack's eyes were timid and emotional, he began to lean forward, giving a soft rasp of a breath of uncertainty as he looked you over, then pressed his lips around the front of your forehead-the action was uncertain and ceritnly unpracticed, but still focused as he leaned his snout forward as eased it across your face, giving his soft breaths of his rasps and uncertain breath as he eased the side of his snout forward and leaned it beside your fqce.

You gave a soft hum, then allowed your hands to continue to caress the back of his mane, the curves of your face easing forward until you were meeting the front of Bojack's plush lips as your mouth threaded against his, your hand that was cupping on his cheek as your guided his expression up while he gave a soft grunt, easing his mouth forward as he grunted and pressed his mouth beside yours. He gave an adorable, off cut breath and a pout as he felt your mouth pressing beside his, clumsy and lovable, gentle and at ease while nervous at the same time.

"Let's wait for you to sober up, darling."

"You're serious." He chuckled lightly, and you hand eased away from his cheek as he looked you over.

"I wouldn't want to do something like this when you're in this state. "Although it is the hardest thing in the world for me to be able to resist you."

"I wouldn't mind if you did." His eyes lowered as he looked you over, but there was mostly a dim curiosity there as his eyes eased across yours, teeth poked, and a respect there along with the boyish fear.

But you gave a slight shake of your head, your lips raising up as your gripped your hand beside his mane. Though the poke in his eyes and the tremor of his features were taking over his expression, there was a gradual somber understanding that overcame him. He turned his eyes over to the pillow as he began to take his hand and grasped your wrist, turning it back beside your chest as he began to inch his way over to the pillows, grunting as he eased his plush body beside them.

"Interesting taste," he commenced, turning his head away from you as his ears lowered. His expression was more cynical and stoitc now, though the entire beauty of a life of a man in those eyes still overtook you from the amount of intimate depth and life in it just from how you perceived it. "A large drunk and jaded horses. You know how to pick them."

"I love everything about this." You eased your body up from where you had been kneeling beside him, and Bojack only gave a soft breath that was unreadable as you raised your body upward. "I do. It's an entire life that's inside of you."

He gave a soft breath; bitter, reflective, his turned to the side as he kept his eyes on the window.

"If that were true, I wouldn't have doused in the first place. People act the way they do for a reason, if there's anything I've had to go by throughout my life or why people are the way they are in the first place."

There was an emotional compelling and charismatic reflection in his tone, though for the most part, his words were aimed at himself. You let out a soft murmur, your eyes turning over the reflection of the neon light from the outside of the window as you took him in as it eased beside the plush of his body and the dry reflection of his eyes while he turned with attempted indifference to the window.

You cleared yout throat as you began to curl your body beside his, and his head turned over as he looked you over, emotion soft and broken while the glimmer in his eyes settled for looking you over as you reached forward, fingertips easing through the back of his mane as your fingertips curled beside his coarse hair.

" I can't imagine how you see all of me, and how you ended up coming to these conclusions if you did." His eyes turned up as he looked you over, though he didn't snap your touch away from him. "If I believed it, I wouldn't do this."

That sense of that compelling story of what he gave you was enough to make you feel a soft shot through what was already that profound depth he gave you enough as it was just from that connection of taking in his story.

As his ears splayed back while a flash of annoyance came across his features, he turned his head as he lowered his head vaguely from where you were easing your fingertips behind his mane; the slight small uncomfortabilties that he was making was enough to confirm that he did it out of a sense of a lack of treasuremeant that he gave himself, and how uncomfortable he was to give it to himself or any sentiment of it, as if it were a physical strain of something disgusting; although truth be told, it seemed as of the majority of what he tried to give to himself to punish himself in terms of being abused, ostracized, and made a tool for cheap humor was a reputation that he held already.

But your body curled as you eased your way further to him, and even though he had a tint of a fight in his eyes and his expression lowered and looked at his lap instead of at yours, though he kept his eyes low and downward and darted away from your expression, his shoulders turned inward as his eyes turned down while his chubby shoulders turned inward, but your body eased in front of him as your hands grasped beside his hand and the other hand easing beside the back of his neck..

"Sweetheart-" He stammered, the words slurring vaguely, eyes kept eased down, and through the slurring of the word and the way his usually naturally charming grace simply spoke, it was clear that some things were too complicated to be able to be solved in one given night.

"I know, Bojack." You gave a soft murmur as you leaned forward until your body was sitting in front of him, and his vulnerable and wet eyes darted as he turned and looked you over, and you allowed your lips to press on his knuckles as you eased your mouth beside his knuckles, fingertips caress his skin.

"Don't worry about it."

Bojack's eyes, that vulnerable boyish purity, turned as he looked you over. "How?"

"Just the way that it's always been. You are who you've always been; there's nothing to rediscover. It's just so happened that some eyes meant to see you showed up at the right moment where you could be seen in a way that made you feel like something was being discovered. Nothing has changed about you, though. Or maybe it feels that way in order to make sense of having the way I perceive you be as it is, but, either way-" A soft shrug as you looked him over softly, considerably. "Whichever narrative that you want to go up with.

You gradually lifted up his hands into the grasp of yours until both were eased beside your chest, Bojack's teeth still poked as his eyes turning across you in emotional vulnerability as he looked you over.

"Remember the way you were looking at fawning over Daine?"

Bojack's head tilted to the side, eyes wincing as he looked you over, ears splayed back.

"That's relevant to this?"

"I remember the way you were looking at the way he was fawning her-as if it was something separate from anything you could ever experience."

"It was." His lips pouted, and his eyes turned as he looked you over. "Well, also the fact that his display of affection is the most corny thing I've ever seen. I don't know how Diane does it."

"I want you to imagine all that natural light affection gave his wife. The way he talked to her, the way he allowed himself to give her everything with such forthcoming appreciation and richness."

"What?" Bojack winced as he looked you over, tilting his head to the side in question."You can't be serious."

"Think of when you were looking on the other side of the room with fawning over his wife, doing every pure little thing he does with Diane."

"And why would I do that?" There was a low questioning tone to the way he spoke and in his air, eyes wincing as he looked you over.

"I can see just from the way you watched them that there's been a countless amount of times where you've imagined what it feels like to be able to execute and to receive that kind of affection so deeply. Take that affection and translate it to this, as much as you're able to. Here, there doesn't need to be any other desire to or need to tell yourself or hear from anyone else the perspective of how you see the situation or yourself. Just take the rhythm of what you saw hurt and loathing in and let me try to give it to you."

"What? Ew. Weird." Bojack's ears flew back entirely as he began to ease his hands away from yours, looking you over with a still caution and a vague defense in his eyes. But your hands reached out and gently eased against his palms again, and though he gave an abrupt and timid breath while his eyes widned and turned back to your grasped, he lwoerd his disposition downward, feeling your fingertips ease beside his palms.

"There's a romanticism inside of you that I know for a fact will never go anywhere. I want to be able to love you through it, with it, to execute it to its full vulnerability." Your thumbs gently continued to caress the edge of his own hands, your fingertips squeezing around the side of his wrists as you did so while you watched his eyes dart down in timid thought.

"Do you know how strong you are? How many times you picked yourself up despite how little you had compared to everyone else, and still managed to keep going? That is strength. And I want us to both be able to celebrate in it for once-everything, rather than only tolerating it. Or, in your case, hiding it entirely."

"Drinks." He said it bluntly as his eyes turned back up to yours, voice coming out slowly and with an unforgiving sense of someone who was clearly only half present within the thoughts and the present nature of the conversation. Your hand squeezed up against his wrists as your allowed your fingertips to press against his wrists with comfort. "A lot of drinks. Not strength."

"You are gone, aren't you, love?" Your words were gentle, guiding as you looked him over. "You can even drink a couple of bottles and this is already how far gone you are. And I don't just mean the drinking when I say 'far gone.' "

"A reminder of how little I've had tonight. That must be why I'm allowing this conversation to ensure." His body began to slump down from the pillows, easing beside the mattress as his hands gripped beside the gray sheets while he began to pull the material lightly over his stomach. "Thank you for that.:

"You know what I mean."

"Maybe not as much as your confidence is ensuing, no."

"I'm so proud of you, baby. Today and every day. I wish I had been there to cradle you like this every day .I wish I could have been there for you every single time that somebody else's perspective and how they saw you failed you on your own. And I mean that. I wish you could know how much I did. I'm not an artist, I don't think anyone is, really-just people who suffer more than others and have the empty space of suffering to execute it. But I feel like I've created entire worlds from you from my mind before I even loved you. And I want you to know that. I want you to know and feel how special you are. Immeasurably."

"Sure." Bojack turned his head over to the side of the bedtable; he began to reach for the side of the edge of where the stotic metal bowl was sitting beside the bed as he gave a grumble, snapping his hand beside the table as he did so while his eyes winced.

"What are you looking for?"

"Pills." His voice spoke it bluntly, his eyes snapping as he turned his head over to you and gazed at you with that dry expression. "Don't worry. Not for any kind of terrible violence acts against myself or anything. Just-need to be able to get some medicine, is all. To help me sleep."

His head snapped over to the side of the table again as he gave another abrasive swear of his lip, eyebrows raised as he snapped his hand beside the table. Your eyes darted as you looked over to where he was drunkenly trying to make sense of easing his hands beside the counter drawers, but his hands were fairly aimless, and hitting and slapping beside nothing but the counter beside him. Your eyes turned as you watched his movements, then settled for leaning your body forward as your hands eased across his palms. A certain awareness came into Bojack's eyes as he turned his head over to you and felt your hands easing beside his palms, and though he tensed, he didn't turn away from your touch as he turned and looked you over.

"What are you doing?"

"You don't need any more than that tonight." Your hands squeezed beside his palms.

"Really?" He gave a slight raise of his eyebrows as he turned and looked you over. "And you're going to stop me how?"
Your hands curled and eased beside his hands while you began to turn him down and onto the mattress."

"Hey-I mean it." Bojakc tried to ease his thighs away from your body, his body turning to the edge of the side of the mattress as he tried to ease himself up-but your hand grasped beside his shoulders as you pulled him back down onto the mattress, even as his stocky thighs tired to eased out of the bed. His eyes winced as he turned and stared back at you; but your hands eased beside his shoulder and the other by his hip as you helped him onto the mattress again. It wasn't until you eased your hand between his plush thighs that you saw how his eyes widned abruptly at the feeling of your touch, and his back eased back beside the mattress as he gave an abrupt breath, then eyes lowered as he allowed his back to ease beside the mattress while his head leaned onto the pillow.

"You're a little tease."

"I'd like to hope so in a way that benefits both of us, in this case."

Bojack's voice was fading as he fell into another softened mumble. "Little naive tease."

His fingers were now grasping beside the sheets, and it was clear he was waiting for you to come onto him. And you did so, and began to take the invitation in full, your body clamoring up to his as your thighs eased beside the plush of his hips. Bojack's head snapped upward as he felt your breasts; now mostly bear from the fumbling of your hands and Bojack's, up onto his body.

"But-" He snapped his eyes up, lifting his expression upward as he looked up at you, pressing his hands with a certain kind of melancholy of desperation on the edge of the gray sheets as he looked you over. "Please. If we do make love, or anything similar to it tonight, make sure you at least take your time with it. And make sure you're comfortable with it. The last thing I need is another stroy script of something bad people think I did. And, obviously-" His voice lowered as he looked you over. "I want you to be comfortable."

Your hands entangled into Bojack's again, and this time he didn't fight as he felt your fingertips easing beside his wrist, gradually advocating for you to brush yourself on top of the front of his hips. You let out a gentle breath as he turned his eyes upward as he met yours, head settling for being fully eased onto the pillow, feeling the way that your body gradually eased further onto the front of his plush one- you couldn't say no to him, most especially when there was already so much a lack of resistance to the way that he already had been tonight, anyway, most especially this moment, and when it so clear this has happened before and it would have been countless times again-the having sex aspect. The proound depth of even the slightest chance that he felt cradled and loveed for, precious, was the part you couldnt dare to cheat from him.

He gave a soft breath as he started to gradually press his hands around the side of your torso and ribs, and your body gradually began to ease yourself under the grey sheets, paralyzed from how good the soft warmth of his lovable plush body felt against yours as your fluttered while you felt the wya he gradually started to ease his hips against your body, with a clear desperation that came from somebody that wanted to grab onto the time and the quality of experience that you gave him in any way that either of you could.

"Gentle, darling, gentle."

"But it feels-"

"Even we both have more time than we think." Your eyes rolled down as you looked him over, eyes fluttering across his as his wide, wuesiotning eyes turned while he met yours, hands gripped beside your hips. Whatever reality and fantasy was, and fantasy all being the same form of extension of denial of reality no matter what contect it conenrned, and all of it stagnant in that way, there was a full sense of the tw coming into rythma for the both of you in that irresetiable moment. "I promise."

Your comment whispered as you allowed the word to hang in the air, and Bojack closed his eyes as he felt the wrinkles of his face ease into the puffiness of his features.

"Ok." His hands curled and pressed beside yours as he raised them from your chest and onto your hips. "I believe you, sweetheart."

Your curled your hands beside his and onto your hips, letting him know that you wanted this just as much, but also giving them a warning that there was always so much that you could or would give him in such a broken air of the two of you; and that he was in control.

"Why do you drink so much?" The question came out as you began to feel your hips coming further beside the lovable plush of where the curve of his plush stomach eased beside his thighs. He turned his eyes up in thought as he felt your hips easing beside his body; soft, gentle forms of teasing.

"Why do I breathe oxygen? Because it makes sense. More sense than...the altern…"

You started to sway him in a gentle and rhythmic fashion-only in the smallest of inch to inch capacity. It wasn't entirely unlike a slow dancing mixed in with the gentle rhythm of your bodies as you swayed him back and forth with your love making, the rhythm of your bodies turning in a gentle circle as Bojack began to feel the pleasure turn further into him.

His eyes began to lower backward as they rolled around the back of his eyes, yourself continuing to gently rock your body beside his as you started to gradually roll yourself around the edge of his own pleasure- just enough so that he could feel the way that your body was gently rolling around his own, but not enough intensity to completely fall to pry into that glare desperation pleasure that he wanted within that moment; not because he didn't want it, but because you wanted him to remember the first time.

"This beast watching you pace around the pool every night." Bojack breathed out of his lips. "Or watching you curl up on the couch by yourself and I watch you without being able to hold you."

"I want you to hold me every night. I always have."

"Yeah." Bojack's snout became even more graceful, profound, worn as he kept his head buried on the pillow, head turned back as he felt the rhythm of his body and pleasure being through you. "Me too."

It was magic, the way that his own gentle considerable voice began to ease through the air, and other conflicting natures of anything that made either of you began to entirely fall away, nothing but a soft and gentle breath of acceptance with his mouth open upward, pleasure overcoming the side of his own expression as his lips gradually raised up, charismatic ease of pleasure on his expression.

"Do you expect me to do the dialogue, too?"

"Of what?"

"Of . Something along the lines of 'Are you ok, sugar plum? I can't imagine what would happen if something happened to you'." He waved his hands in a drunk, dismissive circle. "And then something along the lines of the corny romantic fawning thing you want me to channel so badly."

Your smile smirked up, feeling the soft curve of his plush body craze beside your hips as you continued to rock yourself beside him again.

"I imagine 's voice would shriek through the side of the space with his own romantic concern of attached panic."

Bojack chuckled, softly. "And Diane would say; "I'm fine, . She would stumble, be caught by his hands. just incredibly wasted. Just incredibly drunk. I taugh he ron my own way without even meaning to what that's like. Takes awhile for it to process through your system."

"He would chuckle, and say; 'Clearly! I'll take you home and make you a drink called lying on the couch. You can consider yourself not wasted on me."

Bojack's small and tender chuckle was temporarily broken out by a sudden drunken and sickly cough, broken on the slight spell of the bonding between the both of you as he abruptly snapped his body upward, sickly dry cough easing against throat as he snapped his body upward. Your body eased back, taken off guard, as you caught the sickly and sudden tremor that overcame his throat as he snapped his body upward, eyes wincing and sickly as he breathed laboursly, hand beside his forehead. He squinted with his ears lowered backward as he gazed in front of him in a detached dry emotion, reaching up another hand as it curled away from your hands and came to his chest, other hand coming to grip beside the mattress all the while as he tried to overcome the sickly alcohol affects occurring hours after.

"Lie down, baby. Don't focus on them."

Bojack winced, tenderly, his eyes snapping up as he looked you over, hands grasping the sheet as he pulled it to his chest. "What?"

"You spend enough time focusing on people that were loved while you spent time destroy yourself. You can have your own world now. Allow yourself to be the one that is loved now. Allow yourself to believe it."

"Right." A somber, recollected look eased over Bojack's expression as he closed his eyes, muscles on his face furrowing as his ears lowered, and he gave a gentle breath as his plush body curled inward, attempting to recollect himself as he opened his dry eyes.

"He is annoying." Bojack cut through the tension of his sickness as the wave began to pass, though you has never seen someone so lovable as much as his plush curled body, the grace of his lowered ears, the trouble across his features. His body was gradually pressed firmly around the side of the edge of the mattress, however, and you leaned forward as you wrapped your arms around his love handles and back down onto the mattress. "But he does know how to turn something huge, like his wife getting drunk and going off with a toxic asshole, into something little." Another hitch of a dry breath as he tried to recollect himself. "I'm the opposite of anything...anything little."

"You're in so much pain, dove."

"I'm fine. You don't need to fawn over me."

"So much."

You leaned forward and grazed your lips against the skin of his forehead, gently grazing his choppy bangs away from where they pressed on his slick face; his face handsome, worn, unconditional, charming and wonky all at once.

"I don't care." He reached up his hands and pressed his palm on the same place your kiss had landed a moment before. "I..I don't care. It hurts too much to care. I know what it feels like to care. In a world and places where some people aren't meant for anything. I don't want to care. People only destroy you more when you do. About anything. So I don't care. I'm tired of caring. Because caring iis just another way for people to find a way to unravel you, to be able to use that as another thing that's wrong with you. To make you see yourself that way-to make it impossible to get help if you can't, to just plunge yourself deeper, or how you're trying to help yourself. I don't get help, I just become more aware." He collected himself now entirely from his empty panic, and the muscles on his face tensed as he turned his eyes up and looked you over, arm slung on his knee. "So I don't care."

"I do."

"Of course you do." There was a small release of breath from Bojack, trembling, easing in tension as he turned his eyes up and looked you over. "That's the reason why you managed to get me here tonight. And almost with minimum complaining."

You leaned forward again, allowing your breasts to ease on the front of his own skin all you allowed your lips to gently graze beside his lip. Bojack hestiaited, body tense, but as his ears flew back and he felt your lips ghost beside his mouth, he gave a soft mumble and then a breath, turning his head forward as he allowed his lips to catch beside your mouth, giving soft broken timid breaths as he did so. The two of you were focused; for once, you felt a clear headedness with who you were and what you were doing, and not a constant question of what the was about that you weren't that rendered you worthless.

"You seem to not care enough to have nothing but indifference to anything anyone ever gives you. That's a strength in this world-but a weakness, too."

Bojack gave a broken laugh as he titled his snout forward so you could press your lips gently against his forehead. His ears were lowered tenderly back, body curled inside of himself as the boyish, helpless nature of what he was and the adorability of it overtook you.

"I would mostly consider it a strength. You meet enough people to agree, and you'll see why I had to take it on myself to do that. When you meet enough people who make ti clear that you're not capable of bringing anything to anyone in their life, or being around detail of actual worthwhile presence in their life when you're with them in that real, intimate way, you start to realize that walls are the best, and only, thing you got."

"I don't feel that way. And you know I don't."

There was a tenderness to the way you spoke that came along with profound emotional truth and intimacy, authenticity of shared experience and the details of how it swept and the details of the experience of one another swept between the both of you in the bittersweetness of the atmosphere.

"It's been like what-a week?" Bojack laughed lightly as he turned his eyes up and looked you over. Your eyes fluttered as you eased your forehead beside his. "I think you'll get the idea eventually."

"I know how I feel."

"Really? You know yourself that well?"

"I do."

His body leaned back, muscles on his face furrowing as his ears eased back while he looked you over.

"Is that how you ended up on the side of the street, at the mercy of whatever creep came around and started pleasuring himself to you in any way he wanted?"

There was a new tension in the air. Your eyes turned down, and your lips pressed together. Bojack closed his eyes as he gave a soft restart of a breath, then opened his eyes, tired, as he looked you over.

"I'm sorry. Too far. I just mean-" His teeth poked, and he gave a clumsy breath as his eyes turned up in thought. Your eyes flashed up, looking him over as Bojack's eyes eased in conflict. "Come on. You didn't end up where you did because you made the best decisions, right?"

"Maybe we should go to bed." Your head turned to the side of where you were meant to sleep beside Bojack, body reasjuted from where you were about to enter him-Bojack gave an abrupt breath as he eased his chubby hands out, gripping beside your arm as he gave a clumsy sound in protest.

"No, hone-" His eyes winced as he cut himself off while he looked you over. His shoulders rolled as he gave another small breath, ears lowering as he looked you over, eyes dim. Clearly, he wasn't ready to be able to aid you with the pet name yet. "I'm sorry. Again. I just want to be able to figure out what's actually going on here. Not what we wish was."

Your eyes fluttered down, and you readjusted your shoulders, eyes flashing up to his while you turned your body back down beside his plush hips.

"I know who I am, Bojack. Maybe not in the conventional way of status or of wealth, but I know who I am in a way that has kept me enduring in years where I feel most would have fallen apart."

"I know." Bojack's voice was somber, his eyes depthful as he raised his plush body into an upright postoion while he looked you over. "I get that. I'm sorry. I'm not-" He sighed again, eyes wincing as he rubbed the back of his neck, turning away in timid thought. "I'm not the best at trying to describe the way I want to protect you, I guess."

Your eyes softened at the confession that came from bewildered eyes and the nature of the mugginess of someone who wanted to understand the pursuit of worthwhile meaning, with nothing but a void and bewildered disconnected and tormented soul an experience to follow. Your eyes eased across his as you looked him over; he blinked, his head titled away, head turning down as he darted his eyes away from yours.

"I get what you mean." His voice was heavy in confession, but there was a relief there between the both of you; the relief that came with the understanding that the both of you were lost in life, but you had found the most profound soothing relief that was at the core of everyone's craving; to simply be known and to know in kind, and to feel how much it was at the core of all your problems and disconnect; the profound connection of relief that came from the solution that you both agreed on and worked between the both of you. "I'm not trying to take any of that away from you. I can't imagine how hard it must have been to be lost your entire life, to never have a chance of anyone knowing you or even getting the opportunity of hoping for it." His vulnerable eyes turned back as he met yours, ears lowered, eyes winced, and the countless empty inhuman afternoon where all he had craved was the genuine connection of one deeperly loved and the scars inwardly of never getting it were painted all over the years of his eyes. "I'm not the best at this. I'm not good at it at all, actually. I'm not even sure what this is, and I wish I did."

"I do. I think I always have." Your hips began to ease beside the curve of his plush stomach again, your body beginning to ease onto his skin as your hips eased beside his stomach. Bojack closed his eyes as he gave a shaken breath; you were impossibly small in contrast to the mark he had on the world, yourself no better than a sleeping fat cat who never left four walls but without the peace of mind, and it was unfathomable that you were apart of the cut of the emotional tide on his face now as he closed his eyes and felt you make love to him, your privates easing pleasure into him, bewildering for him, as it was for someone unhealed and unknowing towards good, but fully felt in the strength it gave the both of you; the one thing life couldn't rob from the both of you that came along with the impossibly mockery of something pure. "How many people in your life have told you that you were the good thing in their life?"

"God." Bojack gave a slight chuckle as he kept his eyes closed. "Too many. More than I can count." Authentic, soft, self loathing; gentle, admirable in a twisted and melancholic way.

You let out a murmur. With a raise of your palm, your fingertips found their place around the spacing of his hands that were eased and limped beside the sheets, gradually lifting them upward as they encircled beside your hands, and with a small lift did you allow his hands to rest beside your palms while they rested beside his chek. Bojack's eyes opened as he took to looking up at you, the gentle and innocent unforgettable emotion and that niche narrative in his eyes, black bags that came along with someone too intelligent to not accept their life and to know it as it was, gazed up at you, face traced by the side of the illuminated light outside as the light flashed beside his unremarkable face; and yet you had never been so taken by the story and the mold of his esxence. The emotion eased further onto the edge of his expression as he gazed at you with the spaces of his hands being teased by your fingertips-which, after a moment, readjusted to squeeze and respond by the edge of your own hands by squeezing around the side of your own palms, even as his ears lowered back in further unceritny and precious timid nature, even as he winced while he looked you over.

"Listen to me." Your bodies were pressed against one another now, the sheets eased across your hips while the both of you came into full rhythm of one another; the settlement that came along witht the soothing of a mind of being focused on one paritucalr profound meaning, as all things in life were. "Listen to me very clearly, because this is going to be something that you're going to have to carry with you for the rest of your life with everything that you've already had to face, with all the challenges that people will tell you-even more than they already have."

"I think you forgot that I'm older than you." Bojack sighed, rolled up his shoulders, and readjusted as he gave you a small nod. "But-ok. Go on."

"You're never the black and contained statements of what people say about you. There's always more to someone than that. No matter what people say, no matter what kind of narrative that attempt to dress your identity or your life or what you do, it's all about your own emotions in the way you decide to perceive and respond to things accordingly-and nothing can take that from you, Bojack. No matter what kind of circumstances there are, there's always so much to be taken in this life. Whether it be the smallest little thing, the smallest detail of home of where you can find it- of anything that you can get out of any wisdom of any scenario-and there's always countless wisdom to be taken of anything. People are led by ego, even if it's to judge themselves, but the truth of reality is it is not meant to be judged by ego; and happiness comes from the wisdom to be taken from any situation. Wisdom is happiness, and I felt it in you the moment I saw you."

"I get what you're trying to say. But it's not that easy."

"Everything is. The only thing that makes anything anything is our belief in how other people define it. There's no rules in this life, darling. There's no rule that how you see yourself or how you go about feeling about your life, and anybody who criticizes you or tries to make you see your life as a certain type of worthlessness is ultimately someone who is just drenched in their own flaws. To be able to believe inside of your own perception, Bojack-" You paused as you looked his searching eyes over. "Can I call you sweetheart?"

There was a flicker of something unreadable in Bojack's eyes for a moment, but his voice was somber, wise, accepting, as he spoke; "We've already made it this far tonight. I don't know why I would stop you now."

"We can naturally feel that we're inclined here on earth to do as individuals. We're naturally drawn to happiness when we follow it, despair when we're not. Allow yourself to be proud of yourself and your life when the world tells you should be anything but-and that includes all of the years of your life that led me to talking to you now. Your life has so many countless gifts-you are a gift, sweetheart-and every moment in the present is something of abundance to be cherished. There's so many happy things to be had, and even in misery are you living and mattering and leading to something else, and we're all connected in that way. Despite having such different paths, that's how I'm connected to you now. Even if it's in the smallest details or the gentlest small bits of bittersweet wisdom you can pick up throughout the day, it will lead you to whatever this life is about. It will guide you to something rich and unfathomable."

"But how can I enjoy it if I can't understand it? What's the point?" A chubby arm laid beside his leg as his ears lowered, looking you over, eyes vulnerable, impossibly saddened, widened, and inspiring something out of you that, despite long since understanding that emotions weren't real unless they were wanted to control you, you couldn't deny the warmth that overcame you was so demanding and tangible that you had trouble believing such for more than a longer moment that you knew would long since trail and surpass past the bond and go into that backspace of an entire other reality that was the story made in your subconscious.

"You can be jaded, you can be tired, you can be angry, but never let that be all of you what you believe. You're too good to be destroyed. You're a sloppy, precious, and rubble and fascinating beyond what even I can understand. Take it one step at a time and know that I'm always with you and that I love you always. That I'm always with you. That I always have been and I always will be. There's not one thing that could ever take away the way that I see you and how it's made me feel, even for this short time, and for as long as one person loves you, you have the world-and I can't claim much worth for me loving you, but I do know that I can say I can."

Bojack took another breath, and his head turned back over towards the window where there was the illumination of the neon light that was peaking in through the glass and tracing beside his eyes. Something unreliable came across his expression as he looked it over. You paused as you felt your heart beginning to thud, your veins rushing as you tilted your head to the side to look him over; for all of how much you felt you could finally start to come to terms with reality and to clear your head with it rather than foggy denial, your veins were rushing, heart thudding as you looked him over.

"Sorry. It's just, uh-" His voice was somber, slow as he closed his eyes, painfully, and settled for easing his palm beside his snout as he leaned his snout beside his palm, ears lowered. "You're coming at this all so fast. And you're upbringing-the way that you've been for the past few-" He waved his hand in the air in a circle. "-"The past few, uh, decades,I'm assuming. Without love and more than likely spending every other moment of your life trying to live and be without it and trying to cope with it. You say that emotions can't control you, but I do know that they do damage you."

"What are you saying?"

Bojack sighed as he hoisted his body upward further, until you were no longer making pleasure and love to him in small satisfying ways; his plush body eased beside his chest as his worried eyes were vulnerable while he looked down, eyes puffed, wrinkles deeply embedded.

"You're this woman I brought in, in a very wonky scenario, and you're coming at all of this so fast. Spilling it out of your lips and just coming up with whatever what way you can about this whole thing. It feels like a saviour climax.

Your eyebrows furrowed, hands gripping beside the grey entangled sheets beside your hand. "Savior climax?"

"Yeah." His voice was edged as he looked at you with insistence. "Like, uh-" He rubbed the back of his neck, eyes turned in thought again. "Like if you were to suffer for so many years, with so much indifference, and then you were to come around and to start having something or someone differently happen to you-I would imagine, in order to appease suffering, you would try to convince yourself that this was the big, heavenly climax to change everything for you forever."

You could tell his every word was something he was questioning even as he spoke it; there was a heaviness of hestience and the awareness of possible punishment that was currently occupied with every way his words spoke and timidly were expressed, eyes winced as he looked at you with that handsome worn unconventioanlity, slowly and softly underneath the breath of his lips as he spoke them.

"I just want us to be aware. Like I said."

His plush body, the pinch of his notable lovehandle between his chest and his round stomach curving forward as he gave a slight breath, easing forward as he allowed his fingertip to ease under your chin. Your chin leaned up, and you felt the wet begin to ease down your cheeks, and Bojack's ears lower further as his eyes eased across your delicately. His fingertip took to grazing the bottom of your chin as he caught the wet salt, and though his expression and his actions were of someone who was far and in over their head, the action had all the depth of what you needed, and you found his uncertainty resoundly lovable, even in the middle of your black devesation.

You leaned forward, naked breast eased beside his body as your bottom lip tremebeld while you let your body turn to his embrace. Your lips eased forward as you began to press around the edge of his own, salt lips trailing beside both of your mouths as Bojack gave an abrupt breath while he felt your lips ease beside his.

He turned his body backward, your legs easing across his own thighs, and your arms coming to dress against his lovehandles, leaning onto him as you deepened your intimacy beside his mouth, himself feeling the light weight of your body beside his embrace as he gave another soppy breath, clumsy and loveable, and voice breaking out into a soft breath as he felt your lips continuously easing beside his while your body pulled back beside his; whatever it was in the human race spefcially that made people desire to be connected to one another even as that desire gave people power to be destroyed by each other, that otherworldly essence that was fool's gold in the form of other people and yet the attempt of it to be caught in any form it could come transferred fully between the both of you. Your mouth firmly pressed around the side of the end of his own lips, head titled to the side as Bojack kept his hands behind your head; there was plenty of experience and of the execution of it as his arms kept beside your hips. He left out a soft bit of a rumble of a breath as he felt you ease yourself away, and although he was still melting with the firm later of the sweat of skin between one another, and he was completely torn from what he had done to you and said to you, even as he had meant it in his muddled mind that couldn't quite guess as to what he needed, there was a release of understanding between the both of you, and as it was with all life changing pain and anything authentic shared, there was something almost otherworldly within the bewilderment and devastation that was behind everything either of you craved. The bare of your back shivered under the caress of his touch as his hand eased beside your skin, your skin easing out into bumps as you felt his hand ghost under your skin while your body shook with the emotional weight of the meaning.

"Make love to me," he mumbled against you. Your lips are still firmly pressed against his, your breasts against the unconventional mold of his chest as you gradually began to pull against him with a soft hum. "Please."

His hands gripped around the edge of you, turning you up by his hips with a certain kind of desperate walkability on the edge of them. "Take care of me."

Those were the words you had been waiting to hear, and the ones Bojack had been too muddled and proud to speak; the understanding between the both of you that Bojack gave you the inspairiton to live, and you finally gave him the person he had been waiting for to care for him all the years of his life, the long and hard road of nature of childhood and the irreparable and unfathomable weight of life that carrid out a lifetime of the pain of existence of what he had endured. Had he been able to feel it in its entirely, it would have destroyed him; had he been able to feel the full healing of it, it would have been so much good that he never would have been able to perceive or to stand his existence otherwise lived again.

Your face treamored as your eyes eased up beside his expression as he looked you over, eyes wide and hands trembled beside your hips as he gazed at you with those wide, pure and rare eyes, wrapped under a lifetime of misunderstanding, and the impossibility of being able to be fully content within despite other's expectations and idea of what should have made up peace and contentment.

Once again did you press your fingertips under his chin, and Bojack's chubby hands eased away from your skin as his fingertips eased back beside his palms. His hands were gradually guiding back over towards your fingertips as he eased his hands beside where your wet ones were attempting to cradle his face, pressing around the bottom of your hands as he squeezed them and continued to look you over. His eyes turned down; for someone with the amount of experience he had, in the wake of something with notable emotional depth, he was as aimless and unremarkable, as natural in his mundanity as much as human natural naturally loathed, and both a sense of dread and the possibility for profound light overcame you as your eased your fingertip under his chin. His wet eyes turned up, just as lost in how he could function in a mind that required love, had been deprived of it, in a world that knew far too well that he wasn;t owed it; a stoic sober man and his delicate humanity against fact.

"Eyes on me, darling," you said. "I'll make love to you as long as you can promise that you'll focus on us."

"His eyes look red, clear tender conflict on the edge. You could have sworn that you never saw somebody that looked so much like a boy in such a mature and melancholic graceful fashion; and undeniably, you were drawn to everything he was.

"Ok."

There was a genuine sense of acceptance to it; a new sense of development of acceptance on the edge of the way that he spoke, and firmly could you know ease your own now naked body down on his shoulders as you eased him onto the mattress, and you allowed your lips gently press around the side of the edge of his own; and this time, Bojack took it in full stride, gracefully and entirely.

"Sweetheart, huh?" Bojack teased, your lips detaching away from his as his eyes glimmered into a teasing as his head rested on the pillow, teeth poked nervously. "Is that your thing now?"

"It just came to me. Turns out, for the first time, everything does. You're a remarkable, precious thing. And I'll take care of you every day until you feel it, too."

Bojack's face fell; his teeth were still poked, and there was something both eternal and nervous in his eyes; you were giving him that of which he had been robbed from his entire life, and yet it wasn't enough for a lifetime without it. And yet stil; even that was something that inspired you to continue giving it to him, even as muddled and as flawed and conflicted a headspace could be; even ones as sick as the both of you for reasons that had long since stopped having a coherent reason and had simply become who the both of you were, transcending beyond people's patience or understanding or even yorusleves to defend yourselves, as it was with anything that concerned human life; the unfathomable and indscriable something that humanity would never understand about its own self, and rendering you both as helpless as it came.

Another press of your lips, another moan of his own as he allowed the curve of his stomach to ease beside your hips, and as your hands eased beside the rest of where his crumpled sweat was pulled halfway up from his torso and up over his shoulders.

"Uppity-tight. Here we go."

Bojack grunted as he pulled the sweater off of his shoulder, throwing it to the side. Your eyes flashed as you watched the sweater crumple to the ground, and Bojack hesitantly pulled his arms around your hips again as he pulled you in.

"I'll do the best I can," Bojack breathed beside your mouth as you pressed it beside his lip. The muscles on your face furrowed as your lip pressed beside his. "I'll try to let this be something we feel we can both do. I promise."

His hands were rested awkwardly behind your body, arms eased beside your hips, and as it was the same way of whenever one person who had ever been around him or in bed, there was some clumsy chaos physically from Bojack's end; the constant insecurity and the natural hatred he had for the embarrassment of his body, the way his lovehandles and the plush and complacy hunks of fat cuved aorund his upper torso beside his stomach, the relentless and countless inseucities tht made moving seem impossible; much less enjoyable, not for any discernment or fault from your end, but only for his uncomfortabiltiy with himself.

"Try to just let reality happen, Bojack." Your lips turned across his as you heard his rasps and frustrated underbreaths. He gave a soft swear as he felt your hips ease onto his again, hill of his cushion stomach easing beside your hips. "No matter what happens in reality, it's our attitude that makes it feel terrible. And we don't have to. Take it in stride, and there's no narrative ascribed that either of us need to believe except for what is literally happening, which dosen't need to be eiter good or bad."

Though Bojack gave a slight breath of a swear from trying to be process and believe that of which you were saying, it was clear from the gradual slowing of his fingertips and the caress of his palms beside your shoulders and hair that it was reaching him, and for the first time, the chaos of the world and himself at an ease, and finally-and bit of acceptance of home with it.

The energy kept underneath the sheets, and there was one last word that Bojack spoke that was as intimate as any given way your bodies would feel against each other tonight that seemed as if it healed at least several years of came along with the void of the lack of emotional connection and a void preception of despair, a small reminder for him and yourself of a slight glint of hope in a black life and how quickly it could change and glint through the void even in the middle of the grit of his challenging existence;

"Thank you."

OOOOOOO

"Hey, morning breath. Do you want to see the stars?"

Your cheek was met by the side of the soft fabric as your eyes started to open. The first thing that greeted your sleepy expression was the golden light of the side of the window as it peaked against the hills from the outside inch of the wide window.

You were vaguely aware of the drenched heat that spoke and told the tale of impulsive intimacy that had occurred the night before, heated, desperate, and full of reberemence of how his lips had jammed against your with a childlike vague desperation of which seemed to speak of someone who had a tender need to be taken cared of; and of the blurred, drunken promises of which had been made that you could remember the emotional weight of, if not necessairly the context of it.

"Still on the edge of waking up, or just giving the silent treatment. Not the first time a lay has given me that after waking up from sleeping with me. I'm more of a blurry eyed and impulsive hook up than someone you want to wake up next to, anyway. Good investment."

You let out a sleepy mummer. It was meant to be a rebuttal, but instead did it come out as a discontented grunt as you twisted into the sheets-sweat laden, and telling an entire story if not from the reside of the signs of bodies pressed together of the story of one another shared the night before.

He let out a grunt, honeyed as it was tinted by his natural raspy voice, as he sat on the edge of the bed. You felt the mattress dip. Even now, the deep tone of his voice seemed handsome and compelling in his own specific bumbling and uncertain way-and even the body which wore it was even more tender.

"I would almost say that you're adorable." You could feel the vague caressing of his hand on your feet, wanting towards intimacy, but shyly wrought. "But that would suggest that a conversation was being had, and that I would be expecting a response."

His voice was heavy laden with a reflective tone that only came from a spiritual weight of charamstic wisdom that came from being mentally unwell. Your eyes turned blearily as you met the space of the room that smelled very distinctly of several different elements of what you had gotten lost in together the night before only a few hours before; that addicting, alluring after scent of intimacy.

Suffering was white hot and paralyzing, and the man you had gone to bed with in the middle of the erratic and broken end of the night had seemed like he was the narrative of the philosophy of how suffering both came together and fell apart at the same time.

In his own way, Bojack's desperate hands pressing against your skin was an experience, but his naturally clumsy rhythm had been a sign of someone who was convinced they would never feel functional again-and for a time, in the middle part of the night, when he had eased his body off of you as his weight had clambered onto the sheets beside you after you had made love and fallen asleep together for a time, only for him to wake up in panic of the bond, as if treating it like a kind of horror, it seemed as if that was rendered true, at least for the time he had gazed at you with softened and wet eyes in the middle of the night, breathing heavy as he had abruptly twisted away from you after his body had eased out of yours.

He settled for the conflicted action of turning to the left and right side throughout the night in a clearly troubled consideration of the heated allure of his nature after a lay. He wanted to hold you, terribly; you felt it so naturally in what he was and how you felt connected to him that it was spoken through his wordless movements, hand pressed against the back of his head, molded arms that were clumsy and adorably wrought with a certain naturally fatherly-like nature that had a natural tender sappiness to it that wanted to love as much as he wanted to be loved. And you, with an almost maddening desire to capture that melancholic and memorable grace he carried; not to own it, but to make it the entire focus of your life and desire; nothing else was satisfying.

And yet, his natural response was to know it was better, and more familiar, to keep his distance.

Finally, after what seemed like several hours of him twisting in the sheets, he had turned to you, defeat painted on troubled and curved, well rounded and naturally timid face. He had settled for resting his hand tenitavely against your hip, top of his knuckles brushing under the sheets as he rested it on your skin. You had tensed, and he had perked his ears up-and eventually, with softened moments and troubled eyes and his scattered heart on his fingertips had the both of you come to an agreement that you felt the tender irremovability of tenderness for one another.

Conflicted; that was Horseman's way. A good majority of what you had come to know with the presence that loomed above you now with an increased inquiry as almond eyes watched your body, analyzing and taking in your every movement while somehow still tapping into his need for permanent and safe distance.

The night had been laden with heartache. But something started to unfold and transform when it became all that he knew in the middle of the night, and at some point throughout his bonding with you had it become bearable-something he was both executing to you through the teasing of his words as they hung in the air, as well as his natural tentative and forwarding movements. You hadn't been able to fully process the energy of his form in the middle part of the disorentined night, but you had been able to process just enough to be able to understand that there was a lot more layers going on for the man than what was under the surface; even if he would have done everything to not have felt it. You could feel how shocked he was to have have made a romantic rhythm with someone; to have made an emotionally intelligent connection where there was always only disconnected, abrasiveness, or indifference at most.

"Entering stage left of the bed," he announced, dry toned. "Right to the side where there's this mystery lump where I usually sleep."

His voice was softly edged with a raspy morning sleepiness and teasing, complemented with his usual chamratsic sass and impatience. That was the way with Bojack; a complement of multiple emotions that tugged at every direction in unpredictable execution. When you first met him, it had bewildered you. When you had become attached to him, it had exhausted you. Now that you were in love with him, it elevated you every time you heard it. It was a strange progression.

"You know, usually when someone asks a question, it's because they expect it to be answered, sleepy eyes."

"Waking up," you mumbled.

He raised his eyes cockily. "Too much smash?"

"Enjoying this," you said. Your hands grazed the sheets. "The bed, I mean."

"Yeah. The bed. Not me. 'Course not."

Your lips raised into a smile as you turned to him, arms easing up from the mattress as you looked him over. His teeth poked from his lips as he met your expression-an almost tentative and welcoming smile greeting his lips, though the cockiness was the majority of how he presented himself.

"Well, I'd love to sit here and go back and forth with whatever you did and didn't enjoy, but I ask again-do you want to see the stars?"

Your eyes turned to the window. "I did," you said. "Last night. Lying here."

Bojack turned to the window, and then managed a hum.

"Really. I was too busy enjoying the part where I was trying to enjoy pleasing each other. You know, the point of why people go to bed and have sex."

There was that familiar emotionally dynamic and complex teasing, but there was a hint of that usual impatience to it that begged to be paid attention to. His cynical grumpiness, never too far from anything he spoke even on a good day, was always present in the way he acted when he woke up first thing in the morning- unless he never slept in the first place, which was an occurrence that happened more than either of you ever desired.

This was, after all, one of what seemed like the countless times you had done this. He was something you both knew and didn't know as the days went on-and something told you, through what he both said and didn't say, that he preferred to keep it that way.

He slammed his body into the bed, the mattress inking under his weight. You opened one eye, watching as his brawny arm rested causally behind his head. You smirked into the pillow.

"Way to melt the entire mattress." The comment in your words was jabbing , but in a gentle way-it came out like a honey laced in a comfortability that you both were aware of.

His brown eyes turned to you as he nuzzled against the side of the pillow. "Oh, great, fat jokes. Is that an after-sex 'I'm trying to form a feeling of emotional comfortability with you by lashing out with comments of bad and distant humor to replace a real connection' kind of comment, or a 'I'm insecure and defensive and need to lash out in small ways to make me feel better after sleeping with Bojack for the fifth time in a month' kind of comment? For the record, It sounds like the former."

You opened both eyes now, smiling at him from the pillow. "It means I felt the mattress dip. And I like it. Reminds me you're back by me again."

His eyes searched your squinted ones. It took a moment for him to collect himself enough to respond.

"Easy on the romance, Juliet. It was just a lay." His hand rested against the front of his stomach, leaning on one elbow as his head sunk further into the pillow. His ears were turned back, his eyes rested and distant and solidified all at once. It was almost painful- the natural allure of tender irrevocably he was made of without meaning to be, showing off his delicate nature through every way of which he was made; an undeniable side of him that needed to be cradled like a child. It pained you not to know how to approach doing so, and yet you knew you could, if only he would allow you to.

His mahogany skin was traced by the morning light, lining his snout as he looked at you with a challenge in eyes that were both heavy, depthful, and ridiculously, comically lost all at once.

"And this may as well be my bed now-with all the time I spend here," you offered.

"And you're delusional if you think you're getting anything other than sex." His jaded teasing speech mirrored his attempt at defense to undo the amount of intimacy last night. He leaned himself on his elbows until he eased his plush body into an upright position, plush body turning onto his lap as he turned his head and looked you over, nothing bu his quickly strung on boxers on his thighs that he had pulled on before you had woken up-he leaned forward own as he pressed his lips against yours before you could reply. "And…that. Stuff like that. Because it feels good for both of us. But only for a little while." For a moment was there a soft transfer of precious rest between the action; he didn't need to say that there was a heavy acceptance of a 'thank you' in the action, a silent word of appreciation that was executed through heated lips and a soft touch of his snout against your face; but he settled for easing his body back beside the edge of the bed as he looked you over. "I'm not sure I made any of that clear last night."

Your eyes turned down, cheek eased beside the pillow for a moment as you took in the scent of the late night sweat of skin beside the both of you that came along with the intimacy. Your head turned to the side as you looked Bojack over; his eyes were heavy, plump body slouched forward, carrying the loathing of someone who kept in inward rather than executed outward, fingers easing beside the cigarette. Your hand reached out as it eased past the sheets, hand curled beside the grey sheet as you reached your hand forward for Bojack to take. When he didn't acknowledge it, but only kept his eyes turned down with a small flicker of his eyes and then a vague turn away of his expression, you settled for easing your fingertips beside the grey sheets.

"Just remember that suffering can be a gift, and sometimes it's the only thing that can bring us to the truest understanding of ourslevs. It's what makes character, our navigation-life."

There was an especially melancholic and heavy air in the bittersweetnes of that morning, and Bojack kept his heavy eyes turned forward, maturity in the reflective air as he kept his eyes distant and body slumped forward, your words soft and calm as they were gently spoken and whispered into the air that jad the prolouge of an excitement going forward; an ease of melancholy of mediittion of the heated events of the night before.

Bojack gave a breath from the cigarette as he gave it a pull, blowing out the smoke as it fell further into the smog of the white air that seemed to be a settlement of the smog as it dressed through the aftermath of the events the night before.

"I think we've taught and told one another enough lessons for the night. We've made it all very clear."

You said nothing as he pulled away where he felt the tip of your fingertips easing beside his lovehandles. But your hand reached out again and curled beside the soft plush of his hips through the gray sheets, and he turned as his tired and foggy eyes, hid behind the white smoke o the cigarette, eased over as he made contact with you. His tired and hooded eyes met the soft nature of the reflection of your expression, and softly did Bojack allow the purity of that laugh of his breath to ease out in amusement as he felt your fingertips trial beside his lovehandles.

"At least we got this far, though. That's something enough for the both of us."

Bojack's voice was soft as he eased his plush body forward, the soft white hairs of his snout gently caressing against your face. You wanted to pull the mold of his body back under the sheets-but something felt as if it was physically possessing you with a numb shock of being choked at just how good it felt to have him so close to you-and more than that, you could feel the specific entire world of what was being drawn out between the both of you solely through the intimacy of one another; the refreshment of getting rid of the grim and philosophy of others and instead focusing on the soothing refreshment of freedom of what was solely the both of you; coming up with your own narratives of wsiedom an grace untouched by anything else; but Bojack's hands were timid, as his palms eased beside your cheek, and he gave a soft timid breath of protest; gentle, at ease, as he turned his snout away from your face. It was almost painful-terribly alluring in a desire that was almost intimidating with how tender and innately human it was in all of its authentic softness. Something was so right about it-like a breath of perfect chemistry of a rhythm that made everything else feel like it made sense and was rendered bearable, for as long as you had that solidified nature to come home to.

But Bojack was one of the profoundly depressed and the layers of the inward conflict of his core, and like every tormented person, there were so many murky layers of what he did, felt, and entire spiritual and inner worlds inerward that came along with his own questionable intentions, even to himself; the heavy murkiness of constant profound torment of a heart that had long since lost its way in finding clear navigation, and long since without an answer of even understanding what that was.

"I'm sorry," he added after a moment. His face was full of conflict more than it should have been for any one individual's air. He breathed a soft breath as he eased his snout beside the curves of your face, and you only turned your head down as you felt your hands going limp beside his shoulders. "Not right now."

" Shouldn't have done that." Your palm began to ghost away from his shoulder, but Bojack's eyes flashed up as he tired to offer you a sense of reassurance, bottom eyes winced and guilt flashing across his features.

"I liked it. Really." His voice was kind, nervous-sweet.

"I know you did." You were treamored, uncertain, helpless, trembling.

His eyes flicked away for a moment, and his trouebeld expression tensed as his eyes turned down in concerned thought. "Good. I'm glad you did. I'm glad we both did. I can't say that the future is going to be anything that is…worthwhile, or promise that there's going to be clarity of lightness for either of us-" His eyes turned up as he eyes looked between yours. "But we had a lot of thoughts spoken and expressed where there's usually just a void for me, and I want you to know how much that's meant to be. How-good it feels. And I mean that. You helped remind me that it's not about the truth or the pain, it's just about the response to it; and I want to try to remember that."

Your head turned a few inches as you met his eyes, your hair entaneld against your skin, still slick with the heat of bodies as you looked him over, narratives and words hung in the air as you looked him over.

"You helped me to feel like pain is something that can be bearable; a teacher, and twenty four seven, rather than something to be feared and turned away from." Your palms grazed by his mane, fingertips easing beside the coarse length of his hair. "Thank you for that."

Something soft flicked in Bojack's eyes, but his expression reamined almost stoic and unreadable as he looked you over. You breathed in the natural cigarette and whiskey smell that you were convinced would permanently mark him and his air, chaotic and speaking of unsure addictions and ations, and yet nothing had ever felt more like a welcome of a purpose that your core had been made for before you had even known it was guidning itself to you.

You felt yourself lifting up your fingers into the coarse feel of his mane as it met your fingertips. He let out a breath, a defeat of acceptance in the action as it left his lips-it seemed like a sigh of a weight that was being lifted off of his body.

He inched himself further against the curve of your body as he started to press himself further to you. His plush stomach caressed against your hips, still half strung from the grey sheets, stocky hips teasing against your legs. There wouldn't be any sense of self control from your end if you allowed him to get lost in the unspoken acknowledgement of that which he couldn't comprehend of how much he wanted of that strange, unspoken promise that you would take care of him-or the fact that anyone even wanted to, or felt they could. Bojack had the kind of self reflexive wisdom to accept and to know the truth of what he was and of reality, and punished himself for it constantly. He couldn't even quite process it from how much he wanted it, much less put into words in his own distant and broken brain that was just as much a lost boy as it was an undecided and conflicted man how much he felt an allure to it.

So, he settled for a much more bland and superficial approach.

"Do you want to go to this measum shit that I signed us up for?"

He pulled away from your lips, slight resistance in the action as his words finished easing across your lips. His hot breath labored against your face as his snout rested against yours with a few inches while he waited for an answer, that odd maslcine and grown air eased beside your chest as he turned his snout against your face. You felt your answer numbeon your lips. You were scared to speak too much, afraid that somehow it would break the spell of that which you felt with him that seemed as if it was as fragile as deer in headlights.

"I need an answer soon rather than later, pinball," he pressed. "I went through a lot to get it. Trying to get late tickets from Hollywood chicks is like begging for money from a homeless person. Pointless, senseless, oddly cruel, and also impossible."

"Museum?" you smirked. "Isn't that the last thing a big shot Hollywood star does for fun?"

He shrugged sheepishly, chubby shoulders grazing under your hands. "Famous people can do boring shit sometimes too. And I thought you would like the whole...you know, starry night thing. Women cream their pants for that crap. You see a bunch of depthful universal stuff and start over analyzing themes that aren't there over and over to make up for any coherent personality of creativity. Like the average fan of any television show. Not to say that you're necessarily like that.` Obviously. I'm jist-" A small breath, a restart of his words, ears licked down adorably. "Thank you for last night, anyway. I'd like to turn this etire..thing into another day if we could."

You murmured a sleepy reply as you focused on grazing your fingers against his mane.

"Coherent answers only, please," he said, dryly. "I know it seems like I speak like a drunkard, recently laid woman, but I actually only know half the language."

"I'm still waking up."

"Well, get off your rup and let's try it."

Bojack grunted and got himself off the bed. It creaked underneath his weight as his hands pressed insistently against your hip, patting against you with a rhythm of insistence. "Because I'm already mentally wired and rounded up for the idea, and let's just say that the old Bojack genes aren't great at changing their mind once they get going."

"Fine."

You raised yourself from the mattress as you started to lift yourself upward, the warmth of the spell of the sheets of his intimacy slightly interrupted. "But only because you keep being an ass about going, and I feel like you won't stop brining it up and talking about it if I don't."

He beamed his teeth at you with a dry grin. "Agreeing with me with a fiery attitude. Exactly what I like."

He made his way towards the wardrobe, pulling clothes out as he rummaged pants against his apple patterned shorts. "I do like a woman who wakes up with a little more fire after having sex. Not that I'm expecting that from you or anything, but-regardless." One chubby hand brought up a shirt that was folded in the wardrobe, and his head turned as he looked over the shirt; lovable and plush body looking more so as his ears lowered, the odd loyal grace of his neck.

You pushed the sleep out of your eyes as you lifted your body upward now fully, hands wrapping beside your arms as ou began to pull some of the fresh overnight sleepwear of a dress around your body as you took in the lovable, but ultimately conflicted, form of his body. There was the wordless understanding between the both of you that there would be a lot of incredibly hard and traumatizing truths to be had about the character of Bojack, of what had led him to his life so far, and of yourself, with your own life that had destroyed your sanity from the inside out-but in that was there the understanding that the both of you would come to a certain strength, in a way, and find especially hard weapons in them to navigate life; it was the question of whether or not this experience was something you would face together that left questions.

Your light feet were balanced on the balls of them as you swayed and took Bojack in as he continued with his soft mumbled breaths and the the mumbling he took from a chaotic mind as he looked over one shirt, one sweater, and, as always, a hood to hand over his shoulders, sat beside the top of the wardrobe because it was a given. The prologue of the morning was continuing to ease into a soft morning of what seemed like a warning of what was ahead; what that was, you didn't know, but you felt and saw it in everything that mattered; especially on the side of his profile, the turn of his head, the chaotic mumble of his underbreath, the smoke trailing around his body. It would have been a muggy morning, had it not been for the fact that there was a natural mental clarity that came from being around each other.

You continued to rock on your feet, almost as if a girl born into the new reality swept in front of you from the night, taking in his features as the dim morning light leaked through the window shudders as best as it was able to. His head turned to the side as it was traced by the light of the morning sun. You could see the puffiness of his bags, even from where you stood. For someone that had all their physical needs met and a comfortable life, you had never seen someone with such permanent scars of wrinkles underneath his eyes- tormented soul who took in the hard truth to the point of an admirable character.

You knew for a fact that the way his deepened exasperation that was even more present was from the fact that he hadn't slept at all, more than usual-and you knew from the patterns of feeling his body twist in the middle of the night that the restlessness had followed him into morning.

"Tough night?"

Bojack's ears flicked as he turned his eyes over to you sharply, as if he had been insulted. You smiled knowingly, already predicting that was how he would react. He was touchy, even on his best days-the both of you were, in a string of the same understanding of your heavy devesations that seemed to be promised that came along with human psychology.

"I think we can both agree on that one. And the one before that-and that." His eyes lowered as he continued to patter his fingertips beside the shirt on his hand. "But-it's been a little easier, what we've managed to give one another, right?"

The pip of the soft question in his voice, if not a little bit of a relentless doubt that already spoke that he had answered the question for himself. You turned your ehad down as you pressed your lips together, easing your hands beside your arms as you looked down to collect the complcoaiton of your thoughts, then settled for turning your eyes to the city buildings as you looked over where two business birds were already beginning to start the business of the bittersweet and melhcolic day of distraction, arms raised out beside them as you could briefly hear their quick chattered talk through the expaonse of their discussions while they swpt from behind the window. Something profoundly indecraible and grieving overcame you for a moment as you turned your eyes over to the birds as you watched them fly past the window. The sky was turning into an orange sunrise, bittersweet and reflecting a timeless emotion that wasn't unlike the feeling of something hollowed being on pause as it swept through you; the pain, so deep that falling into it felt like a black relief, rather than having any hope. You felt as if the both of you were complacent souls who, for their own reasons, Bojack for emotional and yourself for the physical aspects and limitations of your life, were beginning to speed up into some conclusion for the both of you; whether it was grief or something with a tinit of good, you didn't know; but either way, it was certainly maddening.

But you turned your head to the side of the bed as you tried to follow reason for now; if only for the sake of comfort of following routine.

"Isn't this thing going to be in a few hours, if we do do it?"

"Hey, I'm the one actually getting ready here." He paused as he sharply threw his shirt over his arms, adjusting the folds of it as he did so while he pulled it over his head and began to pull it over his plush body. He turned as he gazed at you with hooded eyes. "But yes. Terrible with the concentration thing for the next few hours, possibly." His hand eased beside his snout as he closed his eyes. "You know how my brain is. It would rather spend nights tossing and turning over than actually get some goddamn rest. But nothing actually ever gets done. Just no sleep. This thought,that thought, pst blah blah." He turned his eyes to you as he gave you a sarcastic grin. "Best way to deal with issues, right?"

In his tired smile there was both sass and sadness in the action, tinted with a disparaging self awareness that you knew haunted him everywhere. You felt a soft tug in your chest, but you knew you would have to forget it for now-coming to him in certain spaces of his twisted and muddled mind was one that you knew you had to tread lightly, and his brisk talk was telling the story that for the time being, he didn't want to be too closely taken in. One thing was for sure; the both of you felt the profound amount of pain between the both of you that was something to first be accepted-and then possibly, if there was any chance, learned from. You knew you were the kind of person that was wrecked around by the people with power happening around you and responding to it rather than having your own sense of reality, and nothing you had possessed throughout your life had told you otherwise despite all effort, and though you detested the world and found and had experienced the people in it scum, you knew there was a reason for it to some degree; and Bojack was still having the control for the day.

But for once, you found you didn't mind; there was a rhythm between the both of you, and countless things to be learned, no matter how painful it was.

"You should brush your teeth before we go." Bojack's eyes lowered in thought as he kept his hands beside his pants, lifting up one leg as he pulled himself into them as he lifted them up clumsily. "Or don't. But you're the one that's going to have to deal with the glares that we get if you're carrying the trash of the city's stretch around. And don't expect me to be the supportive boyfriend role that puts his hand on your back and tells people 'it must just be the air'. "

You rolled your eyes, but it was in an appreciative manner. You couldn't help but smile-the teasing side of him was one sign that at least for now, he felt functional enough to joke. It was the morning when he was more soft spoken and elusive, words honeyed with a secretive tenderness, that bothered you; that was when you knew he was about to break; and more than that was it such a beautiful and oddly long awaited thing that you had come to terms with the fact that something about the moments had been enough to make you feel deeply drawn in and with something braking from the beauty, too.

He had his shirt half above his head as he began to fully pull it over. "Anyway, building on that-less discussion. More movement.." He finished pulling it over his plush, curved stomach, crossing his arms in a pouted manner, as his eyes turned up and looked you over pointedly. "Please."

You quirked a brow. "You seem a little more on edge than usual today."

"I'm in a Bojack today. I'm always like this. You think this is different?"

Your eyes turned down to his hand as you walked forward just as Bojack was about to finish pulling the the pants up to his hips. His eyes turned down in question and vague fear as he felt your hands ease beside his palm. "You're shaking."

His palms had a rhythm of a lack of focus as his hands pressed down on his sweater thrown over his stomtach, pattering beside the bottom of where his sweater met his pants, as if he couldn't decide what to focus on-if anything at all. He chuckled as he looked up at you.

"What? You're seeing things." He blinked as he looked down at his hands, surprisingly enough not taking them to snatching them away from your hands like you expected, but allowing them to simply cradle in your hands for a moment. "Must be from leftover gin last night." He looked up at you as he gave you that handsome, small smile, and that timid look in his eyes "No big deal, promise. You don't need to overthink things."

It was a lie, and as you swung your legs through the fabric rags of your nightgown,you wondered how far you should push him. There were nights when he woke you up in the middle of the night, asking question after troubled question of whatever drama he had decided to entangle and worry himself over. It felt like your own personal release when he did come to you; there was nothing that you enjoyed more than those precious nights of fallen whispers and gentle touches where you both allowed yourselves to save each other; and from the slight erratic embarrassment in his eyes when he had turned to you in the middle of the night, it was clear hat he wasn't used to be met with open and welcome warmth.

He hadn't been doing that lately-and you knew it wasn't from any newfound sense of peace. You heard him tossing and grunting to himself in the middle of the night-and in his worst nights, you heard him muttering to himself, only catching words of name calling and of tormented sentences that you couldn't even begin to imagine of what they were concerned with.

The fact that he hadn't been coming to you lately was a sign that, in his own way, he was allowing himself to drown. As you watched his plush form twist in his sweater while he twisted his hands into his mane and rubbed his palm nervously on the back of his coarse mane, you felt your blood run cold. You knew his tormented heart well enough; he followed the narrative that he should drown himself alone. The act of convincing him that the opposite was true was a daunting task that made your hands squeeze on the sheets through the night as you heard his charming troubled tone; as you allowed the small but sigingifent gift of turning over the bed in the middle of the night and watched his unconditional molded back, the allure of his troubled breath, the adjusting of his chubby shoulders and the lowering of hi ears; all of a troubled entire world of melancholic black long time life of pain that only he could manage to make lovable.

"I wish you could tell me. At least before the museum. Neither of us know how much time we have left."

Your voice came in a soft invitation that was a tense invitation for him to speak, and even just the soft tremor in his body was enough for you to know that at least to some extent, you were onto something. You buised yourself from the intensity of the opening statement as you touched the side of the side bed desk, pretending to be focused on the task of getting yourself into the white dress he had folded beside you first thing in the morning; one small sign of the amount of graceful concern he could give you that was a sign of his trailing and worry for you.

Bojack chuckled. "Talking about getting my kind of who knows what piece out of bed is something that needs to be talked about? For you, maybe. I feel fine. I feel great. For now. Never better."

A bottle of half consumed whiskey and cigarettes were lying on the table, mixing in with the smell of sex and of naked bodies that permenalty seemed to stain the air-no amount of intimacy you had spent together in the past few nights could change what made up a lifetime of dedication towards chaos and the lack of belief in anything. To this day, you didn't know how many people he slept with. You almost didn't care; you knew the storm that he endured that caused him to go behind your back was a suffering greater than anything you could feel from the extended hurt.

Besides, you weren't fully committed. You didn't think someone who followed the narratives like Bojack did ever would.

Truth be told, any happiness or comfort you could grant him was enough for you. You hadn't known the meaning of unconditional love until you had known his own tenderly wrought, toxic and unpredictable storm-and like it was with the few rare spiritual things in life, it had come over you almost instantly, and had felt like something you had always known anyway, only that it was reintroducing itself to you for the first time; the first thing that respected you only for the sake of it, not because of anything that had to be worked for form your end, or the idea of conditional respect that took almost every heart; especially in that city; anywhere as a whole. That was the hell of the human race.

"Hey." You lifted up your head as Bojack's voice cut through your sat down as his hand reached out and pressed onto yours; your eyes eased over to where his palm caressed your hand, and your eyes turned up as you met his questioning ones. "Don't make this a thing, ok? We don't need to do this corny soul searching garbage. At least not for this morning. Who needs it?" His hands squeezed against yours. "I'm asking you to do this to have a good time. That's all it is."

Your eyes searched his. "Are you ok?"

"Christ. You're really high up on the tail end of things today with the questioning, aren't you?" His eyes flicked down, albeit nervously, and heavy consideration came over his features;one that was soft and full of his own heavy pain, whether he admitted it or not, and as it was with someone as timid as Bojack, someone who was full of a natural tendency to wear his heart on his sleeve-the most precious thing you had or ever would see.

"Well, anyway." He raised himself from the bed as he made his way to the wardrobe. " Thank you for asking, and I mean that.. But I feel fine. Not great,maybe.. But fine. But not in a…talking about it way. More in like a 'get up and move way. "

Your head turned as you looked over to the curl of the dress beside you. You began the mundane task of pulling it over your legs, easing it over your body as you began to pull it over. "It's all about what you want."

Bojack turned as he met you with something meant to be reassuring, offering you the same teasing smile. "Obviously. I'm the one with the house."

Your smile disappeared as soon as he turned away, but not from the teasing. He was breathing with a heaviness already-the main thing that happened when he was getting emotional, as you had come to notice. He started to turn himself back to his clothes, switching his hands against the various fabrics as he threw them backward with a grunt.

"Take it easy." Your eyes turned over as you looked him over cautiously,. "You're getting worked up already."

"Yeah, take it easy," he jabbed. His head turned over his shoulder, only giving you a hint of his expression. "I'll get right on that. I'll take it easy with the way my bones are creaking from barely sleeping."

His voice was mocking in a boyish way with his usual immature grumpiness as his movements became increasingly sharper. "And everything that I feel because my bones are getting older. I'll put 'after sex creaking bones' on the checklist of things that I have to keep going through every day, whether I want to or not."

"Bojack, I'm just saying." You let out a slight laugh,- there was a bitter sense of humor that we shared between the two of you, and you knew that you had long since become comfortable enough that he felt like he could be open with you about the things that he felt and experienced-a rare thing for his jaded heart. Still, even now, a slided darkened insecurity blind overcame his eyes.

"Sorry," he said after a moment, shifting his shoulders as he looked at you come over with his ears lowered. "Not exactly the best day to start some sort of invitation to a date, is it?"

You gave him a tired smile, shrugging yourself off of the bedsheets. His abrasive insecurity overcame his features as he watched you get yourself upward. The term caused something to stop your heart for a moment; something light and profound came over you at the suggestion of it.

"I think we're going on dates?" he asked, eyes squirting as he tried to perceive your lack of response. "That is the whole point of how we're spending time together, right?"

That helpless adorability was coming over him again. You offered him a slim smile. "That is the entire point of me waking up in your bed and sleeping with you, isn't it?"

Uncertainty flashed over his face, complemented by a shot of insecurity flashing on his features as his eyes turned over in thought for a moment. "Sure. Yeah. "

Bojack let out a breath that almost seemed as if it wasn't meant to be heard as the silent thought finished flashing through his eys. He shrugged his shoulders, pulling up his plush, molded body as he stretched himself upright, pressing one hand against the middle part of his back, and then began to play with his fingers nervously as he finished the stretch. He was desperately trying to hide his vulnerability-even though there was blaring sensitivity that couldn't be denied.

"Wanna go? Yes or no. Straightforward question, straightforward answer." His turned to the window for a moment, eyes lowered as he looked down at the ground. The light outlined his dark appearance through the golden glinted layers of the window, , tracing his sleepy eyes that were complimenting the red underneath the rim of his sockets, serving as a kiss to that natural romanticism and grace he had about him; and if he could stop with the rhythm and familiarity of defense he kept by him so closely, you knew that profound grace would eventually leak out further. You found yourself jealous of the light; it was having a sense of intimacy that that you wanted to grant him; jealous of anything that would ever have any sense of intimacy about him; though to take it in gave you a sense of something so rich and eternal, bittersweet in its beauty, that it took you away just to fathom it. Sympathy washed over you for his clear lost nature, mixed in with the ethernal observation of his beauty.

"Maybe we should just stay in bed, which is pretty much your system, anyway," you suggested. His tired hooded eyes turned as he looked you over. "Seems to be the best way I can spend time with you without it being anything more of a strain than it has bee . Can't think too much when you're lying in bed, right?"

"That has been my opposite experience, actually. Must have something to do with the twisting and turning thing over night."

"I mean it." You paused as you thought over the weight and the possible opening of invitation to your next words; but as it was with everything that helped you navigate life, it felt good to be able to speak it, and even better of a lfit to simply be it and to fall into it; and had you come to learn anything of navigation when it came to learning things on your own raw self, you knew it was more than likely something that needed to be spoken, and if it felt like a natural relief to speak it, then it was. "If you don't want me to, I won't go anywhere-ever. I have no timeline, nowhere to be. I'm nothing, and there's nothing but whatever we want to invent this as to take the place of nothing."

"I'm willing to use sex as a reason to waste a day in my life as much as you are- but I kind of-" His low rasped voice paused as his fingers pressed beside his wrists. "-Maybe already bought tickets to that event today without asking." He gestured one hand to you. "Because I was thinking of the thing you just mentioned about the whole…nothing thing. Being able to reinvent something. Although I don't know if the term nothing is what I would use."

His nervous caressing of his hands gravitated towards the back of his neck as he scratched it. As his eyes flickered, he gave a shrug as he started to walk past the bed, easing himself beside you as he made his way to it. "If you want me to stay here and mock you for having nothing to do but sit on your hands, let me know. God knows I'm an expert at both mocking and lying in bed all day."

There was a trembling of his fingers as he grazed it against the sheets, giving away his true timid nature despite his jaded words, his fingertips caressing against the side of the mattress as he eased himself onto the edge of the bed.

His eyes were lowered as his fingers caressed the sheets, playing with his hands with a gentle and fragile nature as he tried to occupy himself with the fake hobby of making the bed-one of which you didn't even agree to using yet. There was softened insecurity inside his eyes, a quickend nature in what he was feeling that he wasn't quite giving away-something inside of him that seemed rushed to leave, but hesitant to pressure you; a good and a desperate energy that were fighting against each other at the same time. In his tormented depths you could feel a certain chemistry and wonderment at the softened layered bags under his eyes, complimented by the wrinkles that were starting to wear over time with his age. There was a tender adorability to him that was almost painful-the fact that you knew he would invalidate any vulnerability you gave him in that moment only added an edge to the bittersweet sensation of taking him in.

"I would say you could stay or leave, but-well, it's kind of not really an option. Unless you wet yourself at the idea of wasting a couple of hundred dollars on tickets that they probably wouldn't have given to anyone else." His eyes flicked up in thought "One of the benefits of being famous."

"Couple of hundred?"

"Yeah, privilege on a silver platter helps bear the other annoying lot of it all-especially when it comes to repetitive fans that say the same thing over and over. But hey, definitely worth it when it comes to being able to get benefits like this." He turned his head away for a moment, ears lowered as distance came on his features while he leaned both palms on the bed's matress. "I mean, I could go alone. Would be fine. Wouldn't want or wish for anyone's company, ultimately."

"Telling me how much you don't want my company. Great sell." You smiled as you edged yourself away from where you were standing by the door, walking back a few paces to stand beside him. "Doesn't seem like a thing most men who would take a woman in they barely know who can't give them anything in return would do."

"Well, we all have our surprises, don't we?" He kept his eyes turned forward, though the way his eyes seemed to lose their zest and life even as he spoke, eyelids lowered and the emotion on his features giving away his essence so easily, as what happened with all people with their heart on their sleeve, focusing with mundane melancholy on turning the sheets over the mattress.

You paused as you stared at him.

Bojack blinked frantically, turning as he met you in your silence, "I just mean to say that I don't mind going alone. It'll be fine." His voice pipped up in an awkward attempting of conviction. He got himself up as he flashe you that nervous grin, one hand pressed on his hip and the other turning into a circle as he walked his way up to you. "You're the one that comes up with all those cute philosophies and those thoughtful things about life and happiness no matter what's occurring, right? Maybe it'll be better for you to be here for an afternoon. I don't want to force you into thinking you have to just for a few hours of stimulation from my end-" His eyes gleamed as his eyes looked over at you in that nervous squint." Of course not! My bad. Excuse me for showing you decency."

Your hands pressed against his own just as he was about to reach to grab your shoulders, with the expectancy that somehow that would add to his insteince.

"Relax."

"Look, I'm kind. Sometimes. A crime in Hollywood. But you don't have to privy to that."

"Do you really want to do this?"

"I do. I promise. Why?"

"You never struck me as a museum person. Not unless it has something to do with some food or stimulation of some kind that was being served. Not to say that I've known you long enough to know you-" Your voice cut off, timid and breathy with emotion. "But."

Bojack gave you a quick shrug as he rolled his eyes with a sharpened expression; you caught a quick gleam of panic as in his eyes before he slashed it over with theatrics.

"Look, I don't know. Stop looking at me like that. It's just a question. You're acting like I'm asking about seeing the second coming of dinosaurs. Which, if you know the right stripper bars to go to, is basically the show you get when it comes to the women that are out there these. As long as you're ok with lizards pushing their scaled asses in your face."

"Bojack, I'll go with you. I'm just wondering why it's so urgent; or why you'll leave a homeless woman that you've only known for a week in your own place. I know you barely care for you own wellbeing-but I still think it's strange, even for you."

"It's a museum visit. It's not a big deal. And with the way you've been talking about me, I would hardly think I'm the one who should be reminded it's only been a week."

"You're right." Your head turned down as you eased your hands beside the sheets that were dressed around your chest. "I just know that we both are in a place where we're not sure where we're going with what we're doing. And last night was-"

"Far, far better than average. I know." His head turned up as his tentative eyes turned over to you, not quite directly, but enough for that exhausted emotional acknowledgement. "Although, with you, I imagine that the standard isn' very high." A shrug. "Obviously."

Your eyebrow quirked. "Do you know that?"

"I've been around. Long story." He began to lift himself off the mattress slightly- a certain distance of defense followed the action now that he had shown you, yet again, the kind of superficial man he was and had been; the kind who spent nights in stripper and with his tongue jammed down stranger's throats. He had no peace with the emotional disclosure; that was clear; or at least, he convinced himself he didn't, though it was clear that the clear emotional intelligence he had and the capacity for genuine self reflection was a trait that was far under the version of himself that he had convinced was the only one he had.

He lifted himself off the side of the bed as his hands shrunk back against the matress while he hoisted himself up. You stepped back for one step, but only on a subconscious draw from what the melancholic and heavy, naturally compact with excessive thought Bojack was, and traced through the silhouette of his snout and the heavy wrinkle puffy wear of his eyes and the conflicted emptiness in them. There was something about him that was running away-completely and unapologetically away from some inner fight, and you knew for a fact that the only way to be able to help him drop his patterned act was to go along with whatever game he was playing, whether intended or not.

"I think it's a good idea." The statement left your lips, whispered and quick with their intention as you spoke with that romantic breathy air. Bojack's eyes lightened with a surprise glint as the heavily hooded lids turned up with eyes wide, and he turned his head over to you with a new sense of alert emotion.

"Really?" His ears perked, head titled.

You gave him a warm smile; gentle and feminine, worn and timid, and watching the combintaiton of a worn vaguely unattractive odd romantic well.

"If I've learned anything about these past few days that we've shared together, it's the undeniability that no matter what place someone is in in life, everyone ends up back in the same understanding of general existence; no matter the circumstances or what status or worth a person does or dosen't have. No matter what else happens, today or tomorrow, I've felt profound comfort in that. No matter what happens from this point forward, I'll continue to do so. So I don't mind. I just wanted to be sure, is all."

"Oh." Bojack's eyes flickered in emotion, and then gave you a small smile; more buried emotion under it than he could bother covering. "Good. Good." A nervous flash of his teeth. "Me too. I'm glad we agree."

Loving Bojack was something that required a lot of abandonment of familiarity-abandonment of any coherent pattern of who you thought he was, who someone should be, who you were. He was always changing, raging from boy to a softened apology of a man, to an angered flame, and everything in between. Instead of expecting consistency, you had to try to follow whatever sort of muddled different reasons that he made for himself. You had to follow his fired flame of patterns, hoping that, on the other side of that deranged manchild that saw the world with an erratic and black marker that he used to spoil his angry notes on, was a man who was able to help himself in some way. Neither of you were perfect or especially lovable or even relevant; and as you fell into the warmth pattern of how you naturally feel into your truth of your natura born essence and shared it with one another, both of you were finding you didn't mind. You were slow ,silent, romantic; and slowly were you both uncovering the other side of the peron that was a mirror towards yours that was increasingly more aligned with who you both naturally were.

"If we're going to go, then, we should make a point to leave soon." Bojack's eyes winced as he eased himself fully off of the bed, stout body still titled forward as he swayed while he took his hand beside his sweater, pressing out the wrinkles as he did so. He began to walk his way past you and over to the kitchen. "The tickers I got us promise that we'll be able to get there in time and even if we don't, we have an advantage, because they'll let us in anyway." He pointed in your direction with a savviness as he shouldered his way through the open door. "That's the entire point of paying extra."

You walked further to Bojack, following his conflicted air into the kitchen. Whatever tragedy or hurt could come in the future, and whether you ended up back on the streets or not, you knew you had to follow it with the air of a child; to simply let it happen as you were meant to, to not be brought down by the baggage of the very real and possibly worries and fears that were ahead, and to live in the moment, carefree and unbound, taking the moment for what it was, and adapting as best as you could to whatever given scenario you were in rather than being tied to the future.

He scratched the side of his cheek as his eyes turned over the kitchen, caressed by the orange light from the yellow foggy start of the day of the morning outside. His fingertips rested against the edge of the hole that had been dug into his cheek over a period of time; a particular mark of aggravation of a gray mark that was dug into his brawny skin, where clearly the same troubled pattern had been met by his hands before was dug even deeper every time his fingertips scratched against it.

"Scew it. I'm stressed. I'm eating something before we go." he turned as he looked back to you. You stepped back into the entrance of the bedroom, giving him a small smile while your hands gripped by the airy drapped dress that was around your body.

"You can follow me. As long as you're ready. I just don't want us both to be tripping over ourselves last minute when it's time to go."

He made his way to the kitchen, body disappearing behind the fridge for a moment. He came back around the corner after the sound of a crackled bag emitted from the room while you stepped back into the bedroom. In his hands he held a large bag of oreos. He pressed his hands into it as he grabbed into the bag, jamming one into his mouth, munching on it loudly as crumbs decorated his snout. He leaned his body against the door, breathing heavily as the crumbs messily spoiled his chest. The balls of your feet delicately stepped back as you watched his eyes wince in thought, casual and relaxed more than he had been now that the both of you had come to a decision, looking boyish with cheeks full.

"Do you know that people actually believe in stuff like galaxies and shit?" He spoke through the cookie, boysihness coming out as his already aged bloated cheeks were made rounder by the stuffing of the food. He swallowed, jammed another in his moth, and continued. "I'll go today, but only because it's a 'special event.'" He rolled his eyes while he made air quotes. "That's practically all people do-try to find a way to make the future more exciting, just for the sake of somebody having something to look forward to. But it's all bullshit. Who needs that insightful space galaxy crap? It's kind of cute, if it wasn't so depressing how stupid it is. How much more are people going to keep dragging themselves off to things that are clearly never going to happen just for the sake of pretending like they have something interesting going on?" His eyes became hooded and eyes dry as he met your humored eyes. "Rhetorical question."

You smirked. "I could try to explain it to you."

Bojack chcckled, mocking and sarcastic as his bottom eyes winced with dry humor while his teeth flashed through his smile, round cheeks and the crumbs of his chewing.

"No. Why would I need that? I just told you what I think. And it's not from being uninformed, it's from experience."

"It can make you feel good. Sometimes it feels good just to have trials of small narratives and thought It's one of the only things that helped me these past few years."

He waved his hand, jamming another hand into the bag as he crammed it onto an already occupied mouth. "Don't bother. Time answering that could be spent getting ready, by the way." He jammed another hand into the bag, causing more crumbs to fall down the front of his lips and on to his chest as he made his way back inside the bathroom. "I look up at stars and think I found hidden meaning." He chuckled as he said it in a mocking voice as he made his way into the bathroom, flicking on the light as the yellow stagnant light drenched the bathroom. "Braindead idiots. Get over it already."

"Maybe they just want something to believe in." You finished playing with the first half of your white dress, fumbling hands fired by nervous energy turning down. "It feels good just to try to believe in something."

Bojack gave another laugh, one that sounded like a defeated balloon, as he placed the cumbled bag beside him. His chubby hands flew over to the soap beside him, squishing it onto his hand, and with a snap of his han on the sink he began to flash the water under the rhythm of his palms while the water ran through it.

"I get that it's sweet. And maybe it is-for some people. But in my experience, the moe you try to put faith in anything that's not right in front of you, the more you're weakening yourself with hope." His eyes lowered in that cynical fashion as he watched you lena by the door frame, leaning beside it as you looked him in the mirror. "I'm glad you had that. I'm not trying to be an asshole." A small shrug of chubby shoulders. "Just making a statement, is all."

"No." Your eyes looked bac to the half messy bedroom, still dim and complacent from the dark of the pink shades still being strung over. You eased yourself off of the edge of the doorframe as you made your way over to where Bojack has causallys trung several of his clothes beside the front wardrobe.

Your hands pressed against the clothes he had left for you that were now dangling on the side of the wardrobe; he had lied out at least several dresses for you to pick from. You had no doubt that at least some of them were from woman who had left behind their clothes that he had slept with; he had taken the considerability to at least wash them, but you could smell the long lingering sense of weed and cigarette smoke that no doubt was a combination of the dry eyed and over exaggerated features of the woman he slept with, mixed in with his own, relation and dynamic cheap and void in its complacent to entertain themselves with cheap dumb amusement as the nonconsensual edge of time passed. You could imagine his plush body curled back as the woman eased a hand, daft with her current entertainment beside Bojack as he chuckled with his brow quirked with that nervous squit of his teeth flashed out as he was pulled back beside the pillows, chucking in his quick superficiality of the character he accepted and the easy ass he could be to appease the quick releief that came from filling in the mold of expectancy he had been told in order to fill the mold of identntiy; anything else was a form of having to find his own way, and no guarantee of attention or of reconcilability, and man feared nothing more than lack of identniy.

The idea filled you with protection; that odd natural expanse of warmth that could only come from the focus of concerning yourself with a partner that inspired that natural emotional intimacy. The dresses were placed with a certain tender consideration, folded and presented in a way that spoke of a small act of an extra layer of kindness. You felt yourself smiling inwardly as your fingertips pressed against some of the fabric, Bojack himself beginning to relax as you heard the naturally bumbly and lovable hums of his trailing from the bathroom, filling the room with a natural comfortable air of two people naturally in rhythm nd present with one another as they were themselves.

This wasn't the first time that he had given small acts of a gentle lover. Your hands picked it up as you felt the fabric grae against your fingertips-you raised it to your face as you felt the freshness of it hit your nose. Bojack never did laundry; the majority of his clothes were thrown carelessly to the side in several places of the bedroom, carelessly draped against the edge of the bed and on variou parts of the floor, as it was with someone who was more in confliction of his existence rather than natural agreement of it. All of them smelled like must and dust, some even of a vague smell of vomit and whiskey. He had gone out of his way at some point to clean the dresses of mishappen advneture for you; that sent a soft shiver through your chest, the connection of his intimacy remembered with a thrill as it reached your lips.

You turned as you caught sight of his plush body moving through the bathroom. You were struggling to focus on anything in the midst of the destruction that was radiating from him that you couldn't quite understand, but you certainly felt.

Bojack laughed, rasped voice trialing the air, causing you to snap your head over to where you heard th sudden outburst of amusement.

"I guess I never cared for it because it was so clear people were just tripping over themselves trying to escape mundanity, when thy know its waiting behind everything they do. You think you don't mind until you're actually there, and then suddenly the feeling dawns on you that you're aware what that actually means. I feel like I know it before I'm even there."

You rested one of the dresses beside your cheek, small smile guiding up on your lip as the fabric eased beside your skin.

"Everyone has their way of trying to be."

Another, laugh, this one vaguely less spiteful, more soft, reflective, attractive. "Yeah, Just like how certain people spend several hundred dollars on tickets just for the sake of going on a date. Which, by the way, is unlike me. Which I also didn't do. I'm just smart enough to figure out how to manipulate the system to get the tickets for free. Usually it takes me at least a couple hours to make sure that I can even find someone I want to take out to dinner." Another cookie jammed in his mouth as you turned and watched his hand ease into the bagm turning into his mouth. His cheeks were full as he turned to you. "You're welcome."

His jadeness is getting thicker-you could see it sweeping into every secretive increased movement that was tingling with a laced impatience. There was some unseen build up inside of him, and it was clear is aggregation was vaguely related to the event and the back of forth of whether or not to go.

"If you don't want to go, we don't have to."

"No-" He paused, hand hovering over the bag as he looked to the wall in the bathroom. "It's not that."

"You just seem uncomfortable, is all."

He jammed another cookie into his mouth. " Jesus Christ, I'm sorry for wanting to do something nice for you. I'll make a side note not to next time."

"It's a great idea," you gave him a tender smile as you leaned against the wardrobe, fingers still trailing against the cloth. "I just want to make sure you're ok."

You didn't know what to say, and you were entertaining territory you didn't know how to navigate, so instead your eyes dimmed as lips pressed together while you stayed watching him with wet eyes. He turned around, grabbed the bag, then took to leaning against the door, plush stomach dressing out of his robe as he lazily wrapped his leg against his ankle. The firm, intense grip of his hands pressed further against the bag, bag crinkling under his intense grip, more than necessary, and at odds with that stoic mature reflection usually graced across his face.

"Well, I just wanted to do something different. There's not anything bad about that, right? A little character development, but in a fun way, a little rowdy exploration-" He peered at you, expression turning into a michcvilous squint, as his ears lowered in a playful thought, eyes gleaming in that mockish boyish playfulness. "-experiencing things and..stuff."

He gave a shrug, desperation in uncertain eyes that were both pushy and timid all at once while he tried to shrug off some inevitable drad with casualty. You felt something shrinking inside of you at the sight of him, rich as he made you feel, decorated and full of so much natural rich detail of chemistry for whatever it was you were and Bojack was-but there was too much tormented conflict in there that had more going on than it seemed on the surface. He presented himself as brainless and superficial, but there was more nuanced depth and personality going on than he let on. You wanted to find him.

Even now, you never quite got used to the way that it affected you-that detailed and naturally wise and nuanced, oddly innocent way of which he spoke. You didn't know if it was because you seemed to be naturally endowed to him in that indescribable chemistry or if it was greeted by something inside of him that you could feel but couldn't quite understand in any kind of comprehensible ways that you could give yourself. All you knew was that you saw him in a compelling way that wouldn't leave you alone.

The narrative of understanding why he made you feel the way that you did escaped you, but there seemed to be a certain kind of bittersweet, loving, tender happiness to the way that he made you feel-as if there was inherent purpose of his hurt that you wanted, and frankly, needed to follow. You had never felt such a compelling need to take care of someone; it was in the very air of how he moved, from his jammed insecurity to his every erratic movement as he slammed it into the bag, the heavy breathing brought on both by being out of shape and by being emotionally triggered alike-the teasing boyish mock of his eyes teasing worn peering eyes. There was an unhinged and chaotic immaturity to him that drew you to a protection that felt as if there would be some inherent loss if you didn't follow it-and for your own story, some strange meaningless punishment.

He was clearly having a meltdown-even if you didn't understand the chaos that came from him, or understood where it was coming from, you sensed he was more chaotic than usual, something pushing and edging him to deranged degrees.

Your eyes turned to the bedside table. Though you couldn't quite put the pieces together or understand their context, you did know on a factual level that there was a phone thrown on the side of the table, money also next to it that hadn't been there the night before. They were messily placed on the table, complemented by paper that had his angrily and messily scrawled handwriting on the side of it. You couldn't read it, but you could vaguely make out the words "Drug...swan...bitch home call".

"You're somewhere else, morning breath," Bojack said, words cutting into your consideration. You blinked, turning your eyes back to him. You offered him a small smile-one of which he returned lightly.

"Are you sure you want to spend your day doing this? Isn't this one of your only days off from it being away from Princess Caroline's…bitching?"

He threw his head back as he let out another laugh clogged by the food in his mouth, crumbs falling from his lips and down to his chest. "Yes, thank you for finally getting to that. Every day is a day off from her bitching. Maybe that's the way that I'm trying to celebrate. Does it matter? Get up. I'm taking you."

"Only if you'll tell me you're alright."

His eyes rolled up. "Good lord. Again with the unnecessary questions. Come on. Clothes on, mouth off. At this point, it's not exactly something that I would consider an option. Unless you want to be a lame nerd."

"I just know that when someone won't answer a question, its usually because they don't want to answer it."

"Honey." The word was spoken with a dry mocking, though it was laced with a hinted tenderness; there was some genuine softness in the way he spoke, though for the time being it was mostly in mocking. "Now isn't the time for philosophy meta. Not everyone is wired the same. You're acting like the time I asked Diane how she saw me. She just went on a confusing tangent about why I was even asking the question, troubled over it, or felt the need to ask it.. Totally missed the point of where my question was coming from. Or why I was asking it. She missed the point. She was terrible at seeing where I was coming from." Another cookie jammed into his mouth. "Don't be like that. I'm good. Great. And no, I'm not just saying that as a defense."

You smirked, then shrugged lightly, and a tired acceptance overcame your features; but along with that was there an acceptance.. "Alright."

His eyes turned up to you with a smirk. "That was an unconvincing 'alright.' I don't want this to turn into something that makes no sense that we both regret later. You sure you mean it? Asking for the both of us to dispel any confusion."

Another cookie shoved into his mouth, his words becoming mocking in a spoiled and boyish way. "And being super pretty and sweet and nice and kind and gentle and all that dickwad attractive bullshit isn't going to give you a free pass from Bojack's land of attempted fun. Today only"

"You really are out of it today." You made your way to the bathroom, brushing your way past him-he tripped clumsily to the side as he watched you make your way to the mirror.

"What? Why?"

You flicked your eyes to his body, drenched in crumbs. "That's your worst sweater."

"Hey-its fine." He turned down as he tugged on the clothes, looking up at you helplessly.

"You told me that yourself last night. Said it made you look fat."

Bojack's eyes widened as he clumsily tripped and followed you into the bathroom.

"Well-does it?"

You fingers grazed the side of the sink as you turned your hands under the running facet, feeling the warmth of the water graze through your fingertips, trying to stop a smirk from spilling onto your lips. "If I agree, you'll say I'm lying. If I say no, you'll have a meltdown."

Defensive flashed in his eyes. "I wouldn't say that. Sometimes. Mostly. " Another cookie jammed into his mouth. His eyes flickered back and forth between yours for a moment in the mirror as he considered what you said, cheeks eleven rounder and fuller than usual as they filled with the distraction he filled himself with more often than not, and both hated and loved-outward stimulation. "Stop saying things that are only partly true. It's profoundly insulting."

"Would you rather I do the other thing that I know you don't like?"

He quirked a brow. Another cookie was jammed into his mouth."Mhm?"

"The one where I lie. Say whatever is comfortable. The very thing that makes you complain about how fake everyone in Hollywoo is, right?"

His erratic, childish demeanor paused as his eyes flickered back and forth between yours. He let out a slight neigh and muttered between his lips as he leaned his pudgy body against the side of the doorframe. "Yeah, whatever, ok? Throw that old motto in my face at the worst time when it's clearly not relevant. You're good at sex and you're cute, that's where the line ends."

Your eyes winced as your body visibly flinched at the words he threw at you, eyes turing up as you met his eyes through the mirror. Bojack sughed as his eyelids lowered in a conflicted doubt as he turned his head away from yours, pupils flickering in thought of something that could have been self disappointment.

"Whatever- Let's just get out of here. If we miss it the first couple minutes, they're not going to let us in."

"Eager?"

"Yeah. I'm eager." There was an edge to his voice, and his expression lowered in defense. You tried to keep your expression gentle, but you were too aware of the way his tone was becoming more edged, defensive. "That's kinda the reason why people do stuff like this, weisedom shot. And to get out, and because I wanna take you there. And maybe because you're worth it. Maybe because I like you more than I should. I don't know. It doesn't matter, especially not until we do it." He shoved his way past the door as he threw the now mostly empty cookie bag onto the already messy, whiskey smelling sheets of the bed. He started to play with the edge of his gray hood that was hastily thrown on his body, hands gripping against it with trembling fingertips that spoke of an increased aggravation that you knew was far from just outward of what a lesser fonder Bojack a few weeks ago would have refereed to as "a lot of talk he doesn't know what to do with.."

"Maybe I'm eager because I haven't been there in about five hundred years. Maybe something to do about trying to rediscover some broken part of me that I absolutely purposely buried as deeply as I could go underneath layers I've ever had for years for the sake of denial and comfortability? Like the way that most people do when they're in rehab. Or states of uncomfortable denial." He gave a slight black laugh that twisted his expression into just as equally dark amusement as he busied himself with mindlessly playing with his clothes; you turned your head up as you looked at him through the mirror. His movements were one of incredibly nervous lovability, despite the intense tension across his face. "People have such similar ways of dealing with their pathetic lives that it's almost too boring to even say out loud." His now again heavily hooded eyes turned up as he met your expression in the mirror. "At least I'm trying to do it in a way that's better for the both of us."

He looked at you with a slight dry potinted look that dressed his snout, abruptly pulling his fingers away from playing with his sweater-one of which hadn't even needed to be played with, as he clumsily made his way over to the wardrobe.

"That's a lot of crises for something like going to a museum trip. And for one that's not even that big of a deal, supposedly?"

You tried to keep your voice teasing as you made your way closer to him, finishing with the residue of the water and soap eased against your palms as you played with the material. . Bojack paused as he played with the clothes against the wardrobe, lifting his head upward for a moment as that familiar sound of a small rasped sigh left his lips.

"You live here for long enough and everything feels like a big deal. You're still living in whatever world it is that you call being homeless. You don't get it. You will eventually. I know I haven't seen the entirely of your story and never could because I've never done anything even close to that, but I will say that I can tell just from that look in your eyes that this is what we both want today. Roll out of bed, try to help each other through every scenario, do what we can."

Your hands found the softness of his love handles. You began to walk your way across the floor and over to him until you were only a few inches behind- and your fingers grazed against the edge of his clothes as they teased under the layer.

You felt Bojack tense immediately, his body turning upright as you felt and saw the vague goosebumps on his body. But he acquired that stoic grace just as quickly, though the splay of his ears gave him away just as much.

"You know, normally when someone gets dressed, it's because they meant to stay dressed."

"Now you're acting strange," you muttered, a smile tugging the edge of your lips as you pressed your lips against the considerable curve of his neck, oddly royal and graceful in how it was shaped in height. His black mane dressed and tickled the side of your skin. "I'm not sure I even know who I'm touching right now if I can't get you undressed.."

"Yeah, I know. Bojack not wanting to get naked the second he feels intimacy. But I feel like you must know that it's not like that for me."

"What do you mean?"

"You didn't notice?" His ears splayed further to the side, and his head turned only a bit to meet where your chin was rested on his shoulder, tender eyes easing up to him as you met his. "I've never made love to a woman unless it was specifically under the sheets with the majority of my body covered. I thought a woman as consistently observable as you would have noticed that. I'm not as open or sexual as much as any stereotype or vaguely poor attempt at confronting it might come across as."

A smile, handsome in its naturally sophisticated execution that he held even with all of his tantrums and eccnetiricts, dressed his lips as he leaned his head backward slightly against your neck.

"Just because you're good looking and pretty doesn't mean I'm going to let you do whatever you want with me today."

"Does it?" Your fingers scratched the side of the curve of his stomach tenderly, and you felt him tremor slightly despite himself at the touch of it. His body was tense against your touch, but you felt the way a defeat started to overcome his tense body as he started to melt against what was addimatley one of his slightly more human and healthy addictions; the simple act of intimacy. The heavy breathing that was leaving his lips was becoming lighter now, slightly more accepting, as his skin and its heat radiated against your palm, and you felt the lovability of the curve of his plush body lean beside your hand as he gave a rasped breath.

'You're all over the place." You kissed his shoulder, taking in the full lovability of the curves of his plush skin and the radiation of the wamrth of his body to turn fully into your embrace. He gave a heavy, conflicted and lowered breath, graceful and stoic as nuch as it ever naturally was.

"You think I'm bad. You should see some of the way certain people are worn out there. Some idiots really let themselves go. It's like they wouldn't know stability if it slammed them in the face even if they were given every opportunity to maybe be a little put together. I'm sure that none of them could. Probably the reason why their careers crash and burn in the first place. I mean, once you lose your mind in this industry, you're basically asking to be drowned. Where else can you go after that point? If I ever lose my mind, I'm a big enough star that at least I can say that I can get a couple of tabloids out of it."

You let out a humored mutter, leaning forward and pressing your kiss against the curve of his mane.

"I want to make sure you're ok." You had never thought words could undress someone, but words seemed to undress Bojack all the time-almost tragically easily, as if he had been waiting to be undressed by even one person who could see him-or even bothered to take away even one layer of what he had choked himself with otherwise. "Can you turn around for me?"

He hesitated, his hand rested against one of the colored sweaters that blared with an almost obnoxious happiness of wanted projected stability-a sign that he was always fine and had always been fine.

"Ok. Turning towards you." His stocky legs began to turn. "But only because you're a good lay." His eyes were dry as he turned and looked at you pointedly. "You get about five brownie points for it." He turned towards you, offering you dry expression; but you could read the emotion behind it.. "Don't use them all up in one conversation."

"That's a lot to me, if it gets me this far." A satisfied ease of tugged as your lips, hands grazing beside the back of his mane. Bojack gave a soft shrug as he looked up.

"Yeah, well."

His body was still firmly graced against your palm as he allowed himself to fully follow your narration. It seemed like he didn't want to leave it, though there was a resistance to the way he allowed himself to fall fully into you. He paused for a moment in his nervous timid touch od his hands beside yours, teeth poking in between panicked pants, and your eyes met his when you cought him on a trail of flickering up his eyes to you;; that inherent sweetness that occupied his expression was currently dressing his almond eyes as they shimmered into yours. That tender, heart on his sleeve hopeless didn't leave his expression as he get a soft breath while he met your eyes; it was as if he was coming upon some sudden realization, and then did one of the sweetest acts that you had long since known he was capable of, yet was executed few and far between; he pressed his lips against the side of your forehead, the action a bit suffocated, but nonetheless still tendelry and authentically wrought, if a bit awkward int its execution. You could feel how much he was trembling, despite his natural cold attempted exterior at being anything but.

"You do have a way of getting into me, you know," he muttered the words against your forehead with a heated breath of admiration, and your let out a soft breath as your eyes fluttered closed at the rapsiness of his voice, laden with a natural wisdom that edged his more often than not whiskey laden air. "More than anyone ever has."

Warmth spread through your body-the maddening detail of being in rhythm with someone.

"There you are," you said, a smile seeming as if it traced even your every word as you took in the natural maturity of graced wisdom that laced everything Bojack said. When he wanted to, he could be the most alluring and wise sounding partner you had encountered; he had a tendency to switch between an unpredictable, heavy breathing manchild, and a soft, laden lover that was broken and yet perfectly dressed in a flowered want of everything he could try to give you. There was a natural emotional and wise intelligence to everything he did and said, whether he meant for it to be or not.

"Here I am," he repeated, his lips lifting into a heavy admitted smile. "You got me. Hands tied and whatever else."

"We can stay here together, today, you know." Somehow, the words and even suggestion sounded unnatural. The way Bojack tensed was all the confirmation you needed that this assumption was correct.

"Tempting." There was a slight dry distance to the response, as if he didn't want to consider too deeply what time with you truly would have meant-and what would be lost if he didn't. His hands grazed against the side of your elbows. "But only tempting. And the temptress of twisted logic known as only half existing prospects isn't exactly something I would call something that should take over something that I already committed to. The art of buying pretentious celebrity tickers being the main prospect."

"Come on," you breathed. But Bojack started to pull away from you, but not before one last grazing of his hands could caress your elbows-one small sign that there was more tender desire to his refusal than he let on.

"You come on. And get it on." He let out a slight expasherated neigh of his lips, the same familiar manic and quirky mumble against his mouth, as he turned his way to the door. "The clothes, I mean. The naked part happens later."

"Bojack-"

"More like No Shit Jack response over here at this point in the conversation." He turned over to you as he leaned against the open door. "Please, honey. I don't want to be any harsher than this. It's good that we understand one another and are on the same page, right?"

He could be hard to read at times; for a moment did you wonder if he was only being jittery and pushy for the sake of some teasing motivation. He could flip a switch when he wanted to; one moment he was desperate for your approval, the next he was cold as ice.

But there was no layered surprise to his action for the time being. He made his way over towards the door as he jammed his elbows against it, letting out a swear as he did so. He disappeared for a moment, the sounds of bottles clattering against one another. You stood with your arms crossed, unsure as to whether or not you should entertain his request. Finally he came stumbling back in, swaying slightly with the influence of the couple of swings he had taken while you had been staining in your conflicted discomfort. The bags under his eyes were protruding further, mane erratic and swaying, and face looking more drunken and worn than before. The disarray looked handsome on him, all things considered.

"If you're going to stand there like your legs are made of line particles of emotional conflict and sentiment, then I may as well just start calling up about the ten other different people that definitely don't like me, but like me just enough that they can experience something like this with me and tolerate it. Anyone will do that. It's not exactly easy to access."

You gave him a challenging smile, followed by a quirk of a brow. "And you'll let me stay here, alone? While you go out with someone that's everything you've told me about, complained about recently?"

Boajck gave you a curt nod. "Try me." Another loud swing of the beer bottle, some of it sloppily falling down his neck. He then gave you a jaded raise of his brow. "Wait, you are. You're making a whole career out of that right now."

"What is the event even about, anyway?" You walked your way towards the door as you sloppily trembled your hand back onto the swaying fabric that dressed the shirt around your body, if only for something to cling onto. Bojack stumbled back as you walked your way briskly through the entrance way as you shouldered your way out to the hallway. You could feel the challenging of his eyes following.

Bojack chuckled, in the way he did whenever he found something worthy of contempt. "Some dumb, outlandish story that I'm sure a lot of astronauts cum their pants over I just want to go over and see it so I can tell people to shut up about something I already know about when they start babbling about it."

The only sound was the beer sloshing at the bottom of his bottle as you made your way out into the kitchen. Your silence was clearly putting him at unease.

"It does sound beautiful, in its own way. If you have the sort of headspace for spending the majority of the time with electronics in front of you that it isn't actually anything about, you know, actual nature or the outdoors or the galaxy outside of the sheltered museum's own personal presentation of it. " He made his way over towards the side of the edge of the kitchen counter as he watched you sit across from him, taking the mug in your hands as you wrapped your palms against it, sitting on the red chair on the other side of the youtube.r His eyes flickered downward as he watched you elbows on the table. His expression became more questioning, undefensive, more curious as he looked you over; that soft precious question in his eyes as he watched your body shrink over the counter. The cup was empty, despite the fact that you knew Bojack had placed it there this morning as a wordless ay and invite to let you know that he wanted you to feel comfortable towards indulgence; the both of your silent agreement that this was a place that it felt good for him to let you claim.

"Want me to make you some?"

'That's sweet for you to offer." A teasing smile dressed your lips as you looked up at him, yet tired and thoughtful. "I'm alright."

He gave a slightly shrug of his broad shoulders. "Figured I may as well offer. You've been sleeping with me for a bit. It's the least I can do for you."

There it was again; that switch between his demeanor. First cold and distant, and then friendly and kind-gentle, perspective. His eyes lowered down as he took the wall of denial for what it was, then turned his head to the box of a small, half used cigarette box that sat beside the sink, walking his way over to where it sat behind two simple flowers sat in a small pot; the way Bojack took to tending it every morning when you woke up in the dusk of the sleepy hours of the morning, his body stood beside the counter as you watched the rare profound tender touch of his fingertips ease beside the stem of the two tulips every morning, sometimes even taking to talking and mumbling to it gently in such a romantic and soft tinted voice as he watered and tended to it with such delicate artistry that it caused you to feel an extensive amount of allure towards him as you watched the purest romanticism of him come out. The edge of his soft and considerable eyes, the soothing ase of his fingertips as he traced the stems. That profound romantic and the rich warmth of detail of two souls drawn to one another was in that expression; and you were relentlessly drawn to it in the sleepy ominous hour of the morning.

"Is smoking the best thing right now?" Your head watched Bojack as he placed the cigarette into his mouth, giving you a vague pout as he turned. "Just because we're about to leave soon, is all."

"Hey, I don't care if I get lung cancer." He gave a blow of the cigarette as he raised a brow. "Do I look like the kind of guy that's particularly concerned about his physical health?" He flicked the cigarette as he threw it to the sink despite his words of trying to dissuade you. "Rhetorical question again." His eyes winced tenitavely as he looked away. "As a matter of fact, don't answer that."

Your tongue grazed your teeth. "I worry about you, is all."

"Well, I'll get your mind off of that pretty easily. The museum thing." He placed both hands on his hips. "Women love stuff like that, right?"

"Sure. Enough to make me stop worrying about you? I don't know about that."

"Of course you do. Just lie to yourself if you can't stop worrying about a lost cause. I'm already telling enough lies to myself today. You don't need to add onto it."

The nervous tactic he had that both drove you wild with the desire to protect the clear conflict in his action and also unnerved you was a detail it had taken you a few days to notice-but now that you had, you couldn't stop noticing the various ways he showed off his timid inner narrative; the way his fingers rubbed against the inside of his palm, the poking of his teeth, the tremor of his expression, the dart away from his eyes. There was still that same nervous fluttering inside of his action, and it was clearly only getting worse as the conversation went on. Though you didn't want to believe it, it was clear that there was another motivation and build up from his drive and motivation towards doing this.

After a moment did he settle for rubbing his hands around at the side of a cigarette box that at at the end of the table, fiddling with one unburned stick as his auburn eyes turned down towards it while he turned it idly in the spaces of his fingertips.

He pretended to be occupied with it as he grazed his finegrtip against it. Part of you wanted to take his hand in yours and to caress and embrace those naturally befuddled and clumsy mannerisms-but you also knew you would have to endure whatever incomprehensible tension that was in him that was leaking out into the dynamic between the both of you before either of you could solve that.

"They have this new three day thing that's gonna be the equivalent to getting high without actually getting high. That's one of the reasons why there's so many people going right now. Besides people like you and me. That's what the 'lowers', as in regular people, of Hollywoo have told me, anyway. I'm assuming that's the only thing why people go to stupid, pretentious shit like that anyway, right? Who needs it? I definitely don't. But I need something that just makes you forget about yourself for a little while without actually having to take anything from you. Help you relax. Which, evidently, from what I've heard, this does."

"You're going to get high?"

You tried to speak the words with a certain kind of attempted luxury, knowing how fragile the rope he walked when it came the the concept of affliction. His eyes snapped up as he gazed at you, panic in them, as if he had been strung.

"What?" He lifted his eyes upward at you, ears lowered. A sudden flash of defense and panic came over his eyes; as if he was overcoming a sudden reaction to something he had revealed accidentally. His hands gripped behind the counter as he flicked his eyes away in that shy, timid affliction. "God, no. It's a metaphor." He indicated his eyes back towards the box of the cigarette, keeping his eyes intensely filtered on the letters as he did so. "These were my moms." He said the statement with a distant and intentional reflection, turning it slightly in his hand; clearly meaning it as means of distraction You watched his movement, seeing the clear conflict and suffocation in the action.

"I just-" you paused, tapping your hands against the table. "I would like to think that wouldn't be a contributing factor to why you would think about this. You're sure it's just a metaphor?"

He let out a raspy chuckle, though there was a suggestion of nervousness to the action. "God, no. Of course not. I said I was joking. I wouldn't take you to an entire event just to smuggle drugs." His eyelids lowered as he looked at you dryly. "If I wanted drugs, there are about ten times easier ways I could get them without dragging some consistent lay along." He paused as his heavy eyes flicked to the side. "Not that I would but-you know."

"None taken." You offered him a smile. "I knew what I was getting into."

"Did you?" He quipped his head up at you and gave a smirk. "That puts you a step ahead better than most."

"I was drawn to it." Your fingers eased against the cup. "I still am."

His eyes darkened slightly at that. He let out a breath as he turned his head, some tremors seeming to flow through his body-but it only lasted for a moment, leaving you to wonder if you had imagined it. A slight panic flew over his eyes for a moment, but it hardly interrupted the dark almond of his vision that seemed uncertain, empty, and lost all at once. You didn't say it; you knew he didn't want you to acknowledge it. In his terms, he was trying to keep it together.

He let it a deep, shaky sigh as he took out a cigarette lighter as played with it with his fingers for a moment, studying it for something that was far more interesting than the lighter was worth. You let him have his moment, being able to tell that he was lost in some narrative with an answer only he was able to reach.

"God, no. I don't need drugs. I don't even think about them." He chuckled in that timid, shy way as his teeth flashed adorbally from his lip, bottom eyes wincing in his shy timid fashion. "Besides, even if I did, whatever works, right? It's all just about having fun anyway. It doesn't really matter why anybody has fun, or why they do it, right? Whatever helps you cope."

Your eyes darkened as you nodded slightly. "But you're not, right? Once we get there, I mean."

His teeth poked out from his lip as a glare dressed his expression slightly. "What part of 'no, I'm not', don't you understand? Do you need me to call up the truth police, give you the exact confirmation number you need from some higher authority to let you know I'm telling the truth?" Another sound of that depleting ballon laugh as his eyes winced as he looked you over with a mocking flare. "Do you know how ridiculous you sound?"

"Not anymore than how you sound trying to keep it together. Which you don't have to do around me, by the way."

"I'm being honest!"

You smiled softly. "Just letting you know it doesn't have to be this way. You don't have to convince me, or anyone else, of anything. If you're struggling-"

"Oh, yeah, right. Let me call up the spiritual agent of disbelief. Hi. Hello." He placed a finger phone by his face. "My current sleeping partner doesn't believe I'm not a druggie. Could you put in an order of 'it's my obligation to tell her what I'm up to', right next to 'she'll never believe me anyway'?"

He turned hand back beside his side as he looked over at you with exasperation-but there was still a playful edge to his words, even in the context of the conversation. He was trying to push you; and although the push was soft, you knew it was part of his tactic to see how much you could handle-but mainly, he was just hiding from you in his complicated buried trail of air and function and mixed messages to cope with as he was, no matter how much it hurt him, or how little sense it made even to himself.

"I just know that you barely got yourself out of rehab about two years ago," you insisted.

Bojack's head titled back as his eyes winced in thought. "Who told you that?"

"You did. When we were making love a few nights ago."

His expression lowered. "Oh."

"I know that's not a lot of time."

"To do what? Walk out and go home after pretending there's such a thing as being permanently sober?" Another teasing and quick dry laugh, and then a dry stoic look as he eased his body backward with defeat."Takes no time at all."

Your hands squeezed against one another. "To heal."

Bojack's eyes protruded into something off caught and vulnerable; but then there was a sma;; readjustment as he tried to recollect himself somberly. "Which is exactly why it's a genius idea for me to go to some stupid auditorium and to pretend to like that's going to be enough to keep me sober so I don't have to go again anytime soon while you're here."

"But you're not-are you going to relapse, soon? And is it anything to do with my being here?"

Bojack gave a slight dramatic moan, the action seeming a defense as he rolled his eyes. You could tell he was attempting a causal air.

"Obviously. No better way than to go to some PG rated star galaxy place, right?"

He leaned forward as he played with the cigarette box, cocking his head to the side as his aged eyes, naturally tender and delicate, looked the box over. "If you ask me, it's a really genius idea. Basically just getting all the excitement without the judgment of any of the actual drugs. The methaphorical high, I mean. Seeing the stars and..things. Really makes people trip out. You should totally hire me to try to help out some of those lost causes that are back at that other place. Because, let me tell you, it's like some of them aren't even trying, and don't know what to do even if they did try, so they keep pretending, and they can't even do that, so they pay an employee team to do it for them" He shook his head, that natural purity in him peeking out through his superficial hundred judgment as he laughed. "Ridiculous."

He snapped his head towards the door, placed down the box beside the flowers as he began to fidget with the the grey hoodie over his body again/ His frustration was increading along with the trembling of his fingers as his nervousness that clearly dressed him and rendered him unable to focus was becoming more evident. You leaned forward further as you studied him.

"When did this-this is impossible." He lifted up his eyes, eyes wincing. "Can you help me out? The coat I put on today keeps scratching me and driving me crazy. I check for tags. None there. Maybe you can see it."

His stout, doughy body was stoic and firmly grounded as it always was despite the restlessness in his eyes.

You smiled as you looked down at your cup, then eased your hand beside the counter as you got yourself up and made your way over to where Bojack was turning and looking down across his wasit, tugging on the sides of the grey hood. His stout, doughy body was stoic and firmly grounded as it always was despite the restlessness in his eyes, muscles treamoring in frustration while he scratched the sides of his clothes. His teeth poked as his expression tensed in that srotic frustration while s he continued to scratch and attempt to readjust with the material against his clumsily and clearly distressingly thrown on clothes-only part of his belt was dressed around his waist that looked as if he had thrown on his waist if only for the sake of trying to add on some fake sense of stoic maturity and some wayward sense of dignity he was clearly convinced it would get from you. You couldn't help but laugh as you took in his clearly panicked clumsiness, bouncing from one side to the other while his wasit twisted in his frustration, teeth poked as his eeys turned while he tried to keep his hands pressed against the belt. It was just barely managing to keep pressed up towards the middle of his waist as he continued to ease his fingertips against it to keep the somewhat too tight edge of the belt beside hsi wasit, ears flown back while he grappled with it.

"Why do things like this not adapt to the years? It worked very well when I was in my thirties. A little extra curve shouldn't stop that."

"Easy," you reassured him as you walked up to him. His voice was timid, high pitched, as his erratic eyes, drenhced in an adorable panic, continued to play across the belt.

"I'm just saying-Ow!" His bottom eyes winced as his expression treamored in boyish panic as he tried to snap the belt further under the curve of his stomach. He took to panting as his head turned forward as ears lowered down, eyes wincing as he took a pant-for something so normally undignified for the average, you had seens someone who still managed to keep that stoic grace with them so deeply.

"If there's nothing to be nervous about, then there's no reason for you to be freaking out, tight?"

"I'm not 'freaking' out. I just want to be dressed properly so lower lives don't find something to fixate on when I'm out there." He let out another breath as he tried to keep his focus on the belt, though it was clearly dressed in an increased frustration that was making a simple task irreparably harder than it was as the belt tightened. He was panicking, and it was the kind of panic that made him unable to think in a straight line-the kind that had a strange baggage underneath it of hidden intention, whether he realized how much it was showing or not.

No matter what he said, Bojack had other things on his mind; and he was, as much as that tender remedy to attempting to hide his intentions as much as he could, still giving himself away from how he wore his narrative and story on his sleeve, whether he meant to you not. Though you knew you didn't 'own' him-you owned nothing, and you were trying to find acceptance of that fact without feeling a deranged sense of emptiness-you certainly felt as it there was something about your life and how it was carried that was inherently intertwined with his-and in that sense, you felt a survurial desperation to try and read one another.

You made your way towards him until you were only a few inches away, reaching out your hands to dress up against his waist.

"Hey, I'm trying. For you. All dressed up. Just for you." Dry, mocking sarcasm this time. "God-" He gave another heave as he tired to keep the belt further tightened around his plush wasit, giving a dramatic breath as he turned his body forward to the point where he placed his hand by the edge of the counter, plush body still breathing heavy.

"What for?" Your hands teased against the plush part of his waist, playing with the belt that dressed around his warm curve; it was tight under his lovehandles, and you could feel the strain his stomach had on the beltdown. Bojack gave another dramatic heave of a breath as he ketp his body leaned forward.

"Well, you know, you never know who could be out there. Paps. Ex-girlfriends. Balloonies and papponies." He looked up at you as much as he was able from his episode. "Name that I made up for people who are full of nonsense." He grunted as he tried to loosen the belt; but his ears flew down again, body cramped forward.

"People who just want to make fun of people in general that look even remotely familiar, or for something that they can squeeze out of them. I was told I have one of those faces. Other than being famous, obviously. I was also told, very unwarranted by someone who dosen't deserve to be named in this conversation, that I have 'one of those faces that's easy to make fun of'. Needless to say, that person dosen't walk this part of town anymore in the representation department. Wasn't my proudest finest moment, but that guy really did learn a lesson when I saw his face twist when I flipped him the bird and told him to get aids. He asked for it."

You smiled lightly, feeling that sensation of inherent warmth Bojck gave you just from the way he spoke; there was a natural clumsy endearing awkwardness in his voice, especially when spiteful and mocking. He couldn't help but be lovable and show off his preciousness, as well as helplessness; it simply was who he was.

"Everyone's a critique until they meet someone that gives it back. Way that it is." Another heave of breath as his ears lowered, closing his eyes as he leaned his hand beside the counter, hitch of breathe; out of shape, pathetic, clumsy, helpless, bitter-endlessly endearing. "Sometimes.

He let out a slight hum as he considered the memory once he finished the episode of catching his breath; it seemed distant in some sort of strange regard, and somewhat admittedly malicious, but mostly met with a softened reflective sound. He paused as his hands pressed against the edge of the belt while he continued to bounce against it with some slight adjumsnets. A couple of moments of a pause as he stilled, and then he looked up at you with with teeth poking and eyes squinted in that helpless tender way as he finished snapping the belt against the edge of his body and loosening it so it still rested beside his waist without it falling off. You had assisted a bit with your hands playing beside the back of the belt until you had felt it loosen, fingertips digging behind the spaces of his back until you had felt it loosen.

"Ok, big guy," you murmured as you pressed your hands against his shirt, palms settling to caress against his arms. Bojack gave another hitch of a breath as he tried to collect himself; body and stomach by your hand warm and full. "Make sure it's not on the wrong side or anything."

Bojakc rolled his eyes, quickly, briefly, with the intention that there was something more going on in him besides quick relationship issue. "Oh boy, spell check time."

"Just making sure you're not stumbling on your two left feet."

"Sure. The A plus B equals C check before I head out." He blinked as he gazed at you while he turned around, straightening up as he looked you over with appreciation. That humble vulnerability came over his expression again that protruded the warmth from what he inspired out of you as he blinked tentatively in thought, fingers playing beside his wrist. "Thank you, though." He gestured to you lightly. "For taking care of me."

You felt a familiar tang of that warmth as you reached out your hands and grazed it against his shirt, hands gently ghosting down his love handles for a moment. You leaned forward and pressed your lips against the edge of his snout-it was brief enough that it didn't cause warranty for any distress it could have given him, but just enough to give him a confirmation of the communication between your mutual approval.

"Don't mention it. Really."

"I would say I would, but the 'really' manages to sink in that you really don't want me to." He leaned into your kiss for the second the intimacy lasted. "Noted."

Bojack's head titled fully into your embrace, softness easing across his expression as he fell fully into your lips and grasp of hand. "Intimacy and the complexity of life experience and of knowing someone is what makes up the bond of a life touched by another just as complex. I never knew that until now. I know it's only been a week, but-"

"You're fine." Bojack spoke bluntly, reassuringly, softly as he reassured your sentence, clumsy and unwaveringly spoken. "The fact that you can even harvest that kind of information from such a short amount of time of intimacy is all I need to know about the kind of woman you are."

There was a gentle maturity and a pause for a moment as you gave a small nod, fingers easing beside his wasit. Your eyes turned up as you met his. "Shirt not too tightt?"

"I spent about two hours last night thinking over these outfits. Of course not."

"Tucked in the waist?"

"Checked twice."

"Belt on right?"

"What do you think I just spent the last twenty minutes doing?"

"No surprises in the thigh area?"

He quirked an eyebrow. "If you want to check, be my guest."

Your expression was warm, almost motherly, not unlike your words as you spoke with a soft breath; "Just making sure."

"You already tempted me." He pressed his hands beside the hood as he shrugged and readjusted it by his shoulders. "I'm returning the favor, you teaser nutter."

Your red, wet eyes searched his as you leaned forward and allowed your hands to dress against his waist, pressing and caressing against the end of his fly. They rested at the part where the belt ended with the snapping metal, and you couldn't help but feel that hardened spot that was meeting against your hands as it rested against his groin. Bojack let out a slight, barley suppressed and deeply rasped hitch, expression suddenly tensing with the feeling of your hand as he felt your palms graze against the middle part of his cock. Your eyes turned up at the noise, meeting on the slight scrunched wince of his expresison.

"Too far?"

Bojack took a minute to catch what must have been the strike of want of warm intimacy betwene the both of you; as much as your love felt romanitc, slow, mature, quiet, undotional in the simplcity of holding one another, that swppt into the hunger of satisiffcation to make love.

"No." His palm pressed on his snout, expression wincing with tender ears as his ears lowered while he looked at you with that tender helplessness and bewilderment. "If you want to keep going, I won't stop you."

You felt your breath catch; it was adorable how quickly he lost control. Your smile was barely interrupted by the biting down of your teeth against your lip. "Thought you were in a rush?"

"What, for sex?" HIs ears perked as his eyes enlightned, and already was that more carefree boyishness on his features taking him over. "You should know by now I'll drop anything for that."

He leaned his neck against your embrace, his mane falling in a ticked caress against the embrace of your fingers as goosebumps emitted from you fingers against the embrace on his neck. He turned his head flirtatiously against the curve of your neck as his almond eyes, handsome in a surprising amount of naturally charismatic sophistication, leaned over and grazed beside your face. It was light, as it was with all things that were good even when full of depth; but there was a sense of heavy melancholy to the action, as it was with all the natural odd artistic melancholic torn petal beauty Bojack held.

"Do you know me at all?"

Your hands settled for resting against his stomach, spilling out the sides of his belt, the warmth of the pudginess pressing against your palm.

"It's only been a week, Bojack. I claim only to love you, not to know you."

There was a tension in the way he felt your words; it was the words you knew he was terrified you would speak; that you only cared for him, were attracted to him, but didn't know him, and the all too familiar pattern of fear for himself of what that meant. The strangest part was that you had no power to to change it; you didn't know what was on the other side of what Bojack was yourself, or whether or not you could handle it, and any lying would be denying the depth of what you had with one another of resounding honesty.

"Are you really going to enjoy yourself?" he asked as your lips pressed against his ears, twitching slightly in response to the tenderness-nervousness dressed his every movement, and you knew not what was behind it-only that it was cautious, layerd, nervous and peeking and poking through his black foggy intention and fear.

"I know that I obviously mainly do this for me, but I was hoping you would enjoy it at least a little bit. Otherwise, what's really the point. I can give you a hundred to go get something."

His voice was tender, clumsy again, uneven; irreparably adorable and helplesss. Your head titled to the side as you kept your hands grazing down hs neck, your other palm caressing his arm as your lips traced by his cheek. Whatever existence and humanity was ansd your place in it, and whatever waited on the other side of whatever blimp human existence was and your own sense of identity of all reality in it, you knew that whatever he gave you, it was your own small personal blimp in peace in the emptiness of the world.

"No. I want to go.. Especially with the fact that I've rarely been giving you what you want."

"Hey." Hs voice turned somber, emotionally soft in a way that spoke of genuine love and concern of meeting you were you were at as he lifted himself up from your embrace just enough to gaze at you in concern. "You have been doing abosutley everything. And-" His eyes snapped down in thought. "Thank you for doing so."

Your lips pressed together, and you turned your eyes, red and insecure and wet as you gave him a raise of your lip into a tense treamor of a smile. "I know you're just trying to figure it out. I just wish I could help you more."

He paused as he felt your hands continging to press and rest against his body. His body was naturally warm, a point of leaning for you, in that way.

"It's not….you know. Your job to take care of me, or anything." He said it as if he only half believed it, and the words came out of his mouth like he was choking on them. His eyes winced with that emotional discomfort.

You gave him a small nod, the intimacy of your teeth gently caressing the fragile front of your lip..

"Would you be happy if I told you I wanted to?"

He paused, as if he was genuinely considering it.

"I shouldn't."

"But?"

Another pause.

"You…won't," he said bluntly. He pulled himself away from you, though his hands kept entwined in the spaces of your hand lightly. "It's easier said than done." His eyelids lowered, eyes empty and considerable in that mature and stotic way that he carried, and leading into that same profound graceful maturity of his tone of voice. "And you wouldn't be better for it."

You watched the way his fingers caressed against his wrist.

"Try me."

He turned his head upward for a moment, mane flying backward against the edge of your fingertips. The grace of it, intentional or not, was enough to make your chest be filled with an imprentraicle amount of longing.

"I already am," he said, voice muttering into an almost quiet reflective amount of admittance. It was a contrast to the pouting way he had a tendency to talk to you before. "That's why you're here, right? That's why you'll keep coming back here. Why you'll stay here if I let you." His aged eyes turned down as they sunk into the wear of his skin in an adorable and regretful thought-he had the haviness of someone who was thoughtful enough that he was trying to think his way out of suffering. "We both know that."

"You don't know that."

"It's just the good sex, right? Even just feeling it." He turned to you with something that was between a teasing but knowing, empty eyed stoic emotionally mature grace. "Maybe It's because you don't really want to know me, can't know me-or maybe I'm pushing you to know me before I waste both of our time."

The suggested and quiet sad reflective nature of what he was speaking was enough for you to pause in what was otherwise a fast paced and questionable morning. There was a single crumb that dressed around the edge of his snout from his previous lovable carefree nature; you reached out a fingertip and brushed it away gently with your thumb. His eyes lowered as he felt the way the tenderness was its own refute in and of itself, though based on the darkened melancholy of his face, he wasn't able to respond to the wordless sign of unconditional devotion that the two of you felt, but hadn't yet become aware of fully in its technicality.

"I'm not here to try and play some tick tac toe game of emotions and then leave when it's too difficult," you muttered as your fingertip grazed the side of his snout. Your fingertip fell away, and Bojack's worn eyelids closed again as he gave a small nod in thought. The desire to take care of him was one that never left you alone. "Believe that."

"It's been, what, a few months? You'll grow out of that romantic phase you're going through. I'll entertain it for now. Not to mention that we both know that what you're really trying to do is survive."

You laughed, lightly turning your head down for a moment to process. "There's that good invalidation I thought I would get."

"Not invigilation. Just experience." His voice edged in a tint of insistence, and you could hear the defense in his slight panicked voice that the last thing he wanted to do was hurt you, eyes flickering in a barely understood longing that you felt, though you couldn't describe. "You are incredible, though. To hang out with. But I don't-can''t-" He sighed, heavily, turning his eyes down again in heavy thought, complcimented by a small shrug. "-Do anything else than this. Probably, anyway. I don't know if I'm capable of it." Another tender shrug, lovable in his uncertainty. He turned as his pout and the uncerintiy of his eyes met back on yours. "I just want the both of us to be clear of that."

His voice was so soft with a charming melancholy of reflectiveness that it was enough to make a burning wet sting in your eyes. You didn't dare play into it, however; you knew the both of you already had enough wounds haunting you enough as it was.

He briskly made his way past you as his hands firmly threaded out of your hands, mouth twisted and eyes tender and conflicted as he did so-as much as his older aged portly body would allow did he detach himself away from you. The alarm that was in the action spoke more of what he was feeling more than anything else. He made his way over to the counter, easing his hand beside the keys he had kept clattered onto the counter as he slung it into the spaces of his hands.

"Well, I'll get your mind off of that pretty easily. The museum thing." Bojack's eyes flicked to the side as that bashful look came across his features again, ears lowered. "Women love stuff like that, right? Or is that something I'm going to have to pay in commission for interest?"

You smiled. The tension was gone-for the time being. You reached out for the coffee mug that was waitn by your hand, pulling it by your chest. "Sorry for being slow."

"Slow isn't the word I would use to describe it. More like-delicately hesitant towards having fun." He leaned forward from the other coutner while his hand grasped the edge of the counter as he flicked his hand against the lighter on the table, dangling the cigarette in his mouth as he snatched it out of the box that he had pulled closer

"You're not going to smoke it before we leave?".

"Usually I'm opposed to smoking these. Kept them arounf after my mom passed and I had some leftover stuff. I keep meaning to get rid of them-anything to get rid of the reminder of my mom." He nodded at you as he lazily waved it between his fingers. "But a good smoke is a good smoke."

He leaned his body back against the kitchen counter, dangnling the cigarette gracefully between his lips as he lit it, giving a slight pout while he dragged the smoke into his lip. You couldn't help but be enticed by the way the soft plush of his stomach gently grazed against his shirt while poking out from his hood, readjusted and more comfrotable now along with the belt-there was a soft allure to it that made your mouth dry with a certain comfort and longing that was tracing against the edge of your desire.

There was something so inherently comforting about him to you; a certain kind of promised peace that was a breath of fresh air from the rest of the chaos of the world, something profoundly and life savingly healing and human in his humble mold of clumsy body and mind that was so endearing that it took you away from everything superficial, and you felt a slight becoming just from taking him in-with no other intention other than to feel richer and more full than you ever had for the sake of it, and for the first time did you feel you weren't simply anticpaitng death in an empty life, that you weren't cradeling isolation and insanity as something that you had to focus on fully in order for the disorteinting demand of it to not get the best of you should any other prescence of something take place.

You felt a bittersweet tragedy at the idea that he had become so lost in life, in some ways more than you due to the heaviness of self blame due to black of resources, and you in turn had in your own way. It almost felt tragic, this moment of rare peace between the both of you, knowing the inherent chaos that followed him from all angles otherwise, waiting for him like a leaper that never failed to want to infect himself with a disease that gripped around his tender but easily poisoned air. It only made you love him more, for reasons that were too complicated and disarrayed for you to understand in their entirety-the sheer amount of almost childlike helplessness to him.

Your eyes watched the way he brought the cigarette with a certain intimacy that only came from addciton as he grazed it against the side of his lips-there was a greeter at the front door of his lips, and the cigarette was the all too familiar visitor that was desired to be a stranger, and yet wasn't. The slight darkened bags that danced under his eyes were heavied with a black puffiness of a familiarity of another desired stranger that was the most intimate and deepest shard of the destroyal of a person's happiness and sanity; the merciless white hot demon of insomnia, brought on by thoughts that were heavy and tortured on the subconscious, and came to the forefront at night. You had seen with your own eyes the way he had kicked into restlessness throughout the night, the loud mumbles of torture that suffocated him until you wrapped your ams around his waist- to which he would respond to by smacking his lips together in exhausted contempt as he subconsciously grazed his head against yours until he shuddered back into sleep, heavy and plush body and troubled features that could only come from a pure heart as he eased the scrunch of his feautres beside your face.

"Gonna be gross kissing you with all that soot going on," you teased.

"Please. You've kissed me after I've passed out drunk ten times. You'll be fine. I'm not the only one with whiskey breath in this dynamic either."

He dangled the cigarette against his lip for a moment, humming and bumbling as he turned his head downward. He looked back up, a surprise amount of sincerity in his eyes.

"I'm kidding." His fingers grazed against the edge of the cigarette, conflict in his dark almond eyes when you only peered at him through vague silent amusement of the coffee cup.. His stout fingers complimented his full and rounded cheeks with a certain memorizing look of alluring conomination between a fullness of irreparable vulnerability that was complimented by an adorability, traced and complemented well by the sharp wisdom in his eyes. "I love kissing you. It's so cute-the way that you turn your head up and roll yourself awake. Some mornings I stay up just to watch you. And I mean that."

You blinked in surprise at the amount of sincerity that was in his raspy laden, softened voice, the soft nervous poke of his teeth.

"You're impossibly lovable when you allow yourself to be vulnerable."

Bojakc chuckled, the sound and his expression almost apologetic as he turned his eyes down in that soft and lovable apology and unceritniy.

"Yeah, well. I've had a better blueprint more than usual lately."

"You're all over the place this morning," you commented, your lips raising up into a slight bit of a subconscious raise of an awe stricken softness that you didn't even intend.

He let out a shrug of his broad, softly laden shoulders, expression slightly more stoic now as he spoke;"I figured I may as well lighten the mood when I can. From the whole, you know, drug escapade questionnaire thing you brought this morning, the fact that neither of us know quite what 'this' is or what it's going to look like going forward-the whole you..being homeless thing."

He gazed up at you as he continued to revolve the cigarette in fingers. His eyes kept flickering up to you, then downward in thought, then back up again. "May as well keep the mood light. That's the only good lays and smashes like this are for, right?"

He hoisted himself from the counter as he started to walk his way towards you, seeming as if the words of attempted causality, despite that clear infaucation that was dressing his words, was used as a distraction from what he was executing to you otherwise; the welcome to intimacy, despite the fact that it was clear that he could sense that you knew something was wrong.

You didn't comment as you raised up your eyes, lifted your body from the chair, and made your way over to the kitchen table. You kept turning your eyes to Bojack and allowed him to sit down next to you on the small circle table beside the kitchen after he watched you for a moment in question. Hestience glinited in his eyes, but after a moment did he raise up his hands and graze his fingers on the side of your cheek as he followed you and settled down in the kitchen chair only a few inches from yours, your hands still on the mug as you leaned into the touch., Bojack's eyes concerned as he looked you over and sat in the chair beside you. How impossibly rich it felt to have someone to see and be on the same page emotionally as you; how profound and life changing it felt, and how tragic it was that something like that was considered rare to begin with.

It was a burning sensation of welcomed softness as you felt the way his heated skin pressed and caressed against your chek, glidning softly against the burning red of your skin. Your tired skin pressed against his fingers, cheek fully rested beside his hand.

"Don't look too much into this," he said in an attempt of casualty as your eyes fluttered softly across his concerned feutres "This is like a small game for the both of us. Don't take it seriously, no big consequences. Big picture." He gestured his arm in front of you to portray his trail of thought.

Your eyebrows furrowed. "Is that how you've gone about this?"

Bojack's eyes flicked down, and there was a vague tint of insecurity in his eyes.

"We know we won't commit. So we're just taking the good where we can find it, right?" His eyes winced as he turned and looked you over; there was a desperation for confirmation as his eyes looked into yours.

"Right," you murmured in kind, though you felt as if you hardly meant the words as you spoke them; based off of that softened wise reparability that was executing in his low laden voice, you could tell he didn't either. But based on how afraid he was you knew more than how much he wanted to mean it-he didn't want to even more. Everything he did was so incredibly saturated in the need for validation; you could see it drenched in the very few people he could stand. For all of how picky he was for the people he actually kept around, if he did with anyone at all, there was just as much of a catch for every tenderness he executed to remind them that they weren't special. For everyone that he fell in love with, whether it was sexually. platonically, amalicailty, or otherwise, there was a bitter range of rejection just as many and just as much as there was acceptance. He was there as a lover, and yet he wasn't. You knew that the narcissism that he carried around with him drowned himself just as much as others were wounded by it-but it was familiar, and that was why he chose it time and time again, and it kept him in control, and you had a feeling Bojack had never had a sense of control to the point of sickness of every kind.

It only made these hesitant but undeniable invitations that you were, in fact, someone at least somewhat special to him that made it that much more memorable.

"Anyway, get your stuff together so we can leave." Bojack blinked as he gave into a reset, as his caress gravitated away from your cheeks. You let out a soft, disoriented murmur, as if being woken out from a much needed sleep, as he lifted his way up from the table. "If we wait much longer, we'll be late.

"Nice to know that I can be special to somebody so incredibly remarkable."

You spoke the statement with the usual dry humor to deflect your disappointment towards the intimacy, trusting that he would pick up on your true intention of wanting to invite him into something deeper. He looked over at you with that familiar slight uncertain apology, dressed on his snout as his fingers that had been caressing you were replaced by the cigarette that was still gently revolving around the front of his two fingers that he picked up as a nervous habit to have anything beside him at all in the wake of the ever passing life of something that was only full of constant lack of control he barely had. He attempted to give away something that was more casual, indifferent, while his unreadable eyes turned to the cigarette as he placed it in the pout of his mouth.

"Yeah, I'm remarkable. A remarkable piece of 'whatever makes the sugar between the sheets without the pepper'. The drama is the pepper." He gave a slight breath as he took a drag of the cigarette, blowing out the smoke, conflicted in both defense and apology. "Again, the only reason why I say that is because of the whole drug suspicion thing that you keep bringing up."

"I think I've only questioned you once. You're the one that keeps bringing up the one question."

A slight surprise and worry snapped across Bojack's eyes as his expression widned. "That's just because one question equals several answers to balance it out! Obviously!"

"Just wanting to make sure you're safe. I know I can't control the way you act outside of whatever we do, but I want to at least when we're around one another." Bojack flashed his poked teeth at you, expression timid, defensive, but mostly caught off guard as he heard your word. "At least for while I have the slightest window to take care of you.

Bojack's panic lowered, and instead did a stoic understanding, and something muddled and tender, ease across his features.

"A mom and a free therapist. Cute. And I'm a non-boyfriend boyfriend that dances and prances around trying to make sure that you can stay happy for while we're together. Seems like a decent trade, at least as far as dynamics goes. Not to say that the standards are high."

He opened up the refrigerator door, looking into it as if he felt it was interesting. "Not usually something I put up with." He took out a bottle and shook it in his hands as he looked down at it and frowned. "It's only because you have a way of making things feel particularly cute in the morning hours that I want to do things with you sometimes. Feelings that shouldn't really exist, unless they're quickly followed by excessive sugar, vodka, and possibly coffee. And, of course, a large dose of reminder of reality."

He finished shaking the glass of the bottle of what looked like the white liquid of milk, as if to decide if he wanted to drink it or not, then placed it back into the fridge, eyes somber and empty. "Which I'm going to make right now. " He walked his way over to the coffee maker that was sitting on the side of the counter.

"Do you really need all that just to accept the idea of spending time with someone?"

Your question was tinged with a slight discomfort towards his own clear dysfunctionality of emotions. From the back of where is stout body stood, you didn't see any immediate reaction, but you caught the slight sway of his body as his ears twitched.

"Yeah. That." Hr rolled his head back as he placed the cigarette in his mouth, you watching the silhouette of his body as he turned and began to concern his hands with the packets of sugar by the window. "And a long, excessive inward talk afterward about whatever is going through my head. And a morning smoke. And a question of why I did it in the first place. And about…" He tapped his fingertips against the edge of his thigh as he turned his expression dramatically upward. "Five hundred some cans of beer. Give or take. It's not wrong and it's not right, it's just the way it works for me and always has, and I think there's a reason why we're drawn to relief, and I don't see why that should be taken away just because it's not 'ethical'. Whatever that even means."

He turned his eyes back to you as he gave you another small of that tender raise of his lip as it met his eyes. Though it was meant as comforting, you could sense the level of warning and caution in his eyes.

You turned away as you shrugged lightly, trying to ease off the discomfort of the clear signs he was giving you to run. You didn't want to think about it-you didn't want to cut off the connection that felt as few and far between as any remarkability any given searching self aware person found in what was otherwise a fairly robotic or empty existence. You knew how love worked-and you knew how being human worked. You wouldn't let go of that undeniable sense of that need of purpose and poised sense that came into naturally being connected to the way you had connected to him in soft, musky sheets and softer mornings until he physically pulled you away.

"Not that it's any of my business, but I thought they told you not to do so many of these things in the morning anymore. Said that it wasn't the best way for you to cope. They said there was virtue in staying humble no matter where you were in life or if you thought you were better than people or not. Said that the more you bought into narcissism or thinking you were better than other, your crack back down to the bottom of realizing that you're on the same plane of existence as much as anyone would cause you to use unless you felt peace with it. That if you didn't find activites to ground you and help you believe in something, the black choas of indifference to your life and lack of value would overcome you."

Bojack's squinted. "You read my rehab report?"

"It was by your table. Why won't you listen to them?"

"Well, you're right about one thing with that statement. It's none of your business. I'll take what I want even if I get in trouble, self endowed sickliness or otherwise, for it. Forgot to add that little detail. I have a way of making sure Bojack assures himself he's one of the most unhealthy people at the museum."

"Why?"

"Relax, nutter. It's a joke." Bojack's eyelids lowered in dry sarcasm while he lifted his cup to where you sat. "And it keeps it interesting, right? Otherwise, it's probably just a bunch of rich people in their fancy bubbles, going about and staring at all the things that are going to make them feel special and entertained for a little while. Trust me, once you live around these people enough, there's nothing more boring than playing pretend in terms of thinking it all fulfills you when you learned a long time ago it dosen't and don't complain about it."

He pressed a glass bottle of whiskey that was sat behind a few items of the counter as he turned to take it, eased it against the steaming mug of coffee, swirled it, then took a quick swing of it. He let out a raspy moan as he pressed it on the counter, shouldering his way back into his hood.

"I'm ready when you are," he said as he made his way over to the door. The smell of coffee, cigarettes, whiskey and the slight after scent of sex trailed through his body as he made his way across the room. You couldn't deny that, complications of emotions aside, you were enjoying the heavy smell of the cigarette smoke as it trailed through the air, found peace in the sound of the coffee maker as it interrupted what would have otherwise been an unremarkable noise in an unremarkable morning. There was something about him that made everything feel grounded, present, known-rich. He would disagree with you if you spoke it out loud. Yet there was a certain grounding that you felt with everything that was him, in his own specific way, and it reminded you just how lucky you were to have these moments at all, though you knew types like Bojack ever allowed it to be more than that; a moment.

"I hope you don't take my nagging as something that's meant to be caging. Or even worse, boring." You got yourself up from the table as you made your way to your coat that was clumsily pressed on the floor as Bojack spoke.

Bojack's eyes turned downward as he watched with an small amused, apologetic smirk as he watched the way you leaned down and picked it up.

"I hope that's your type of material that you like. I tried to pick up something that was-" His eyes turned to the side as he scratched the back of his neck. "-Bearable and looked at least somewhat decent. In case anything were to..happen, while you were there, that would extend over to you needing to go home by yourself."

Your eyes raised as you met his timid expression.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Your question was gentle in how it was spoken, but with an edge of genuine inquiry.

"I don't know." Bojack shrugged as he rolled up his eyes in vague annoyance. "It means-" He paused as he breathed, turning his eyes to the side in conflicted thought. He gave a sigh, and then restarted."It means making healthy decisions around here isn't exactly known as the normal. It means you weren't the best influence last night either." A slight confidence entered his eyes at the intimate teasing as he pressed his hand against the door, causing the warm air of the city to trail through the front of the room. "Something improving for myself after the age of fifty around here? Now that would be something that would be worth seeing and paying hundreds of dollars for. For any Hollywood person after they make it past a certain age, their brain hardens and they're permanently in their miserable little mashion shackle, held forever and stuck in who they are. Seeing that anti-average stereotype would be incredible."

"All that teasing and pessimism just for some well wrought concern." You placed your arms into the coat as you began to shrug it on. You could tell just from how the gray material felt around your arms while you pulled it over your body and from the size of how huge it was that it was his usual gray coat that he sported; the one he was wearing was a bit tighter around his body, seemed less worn with stain of whisky from being worn less, the round poke of his stomach easing out of it. You began to walk forward, your fingers trailing through your hair as you tried to get the rest of the tangles out, smiling over at Bojack delicately, cheeks reddened as you walked your way to him.

Bojack reached out and nudged you slightly with his hand. "Morning, Bedhead. Welcome to the average morning around here. Back and forth bantering. Nice of you to finally wake up."

He pressed open the door, letting out a raspy moan as the sharp breeze laced into the side of the space of the door. The cigarette fell from his lips as he made his way outward, the black of its soot falling against his leg. You watched it drop as it fell onto the ground, as clumsily and as messily forgotten as the rest of whatever conflict could have been addressed.

"Don't forget," you reminded him, as you reached out a hand and took the tan coat that Bojack had kept hung by the door; he had asked you before bed last night, after making love with skins sweat and slick from intertwining, arms pressed around your hips while his chek had rested against the top of your head that he has spoken the rasped request that you would remind him about it in the morning to bring two. Why, you didn't know, but from the way the short length of the coast as it hung over his hips and barely covered his stomach did you guess it came from a sense of deep insecurity; and something to do with that insecure look in his eyes that he tried to cover with a bashful adorable poke of his teeth and small grin. And anyway, you had been far too content to be concerned or especially worried about much of anything as the lovability of his plush arms had wrapped around your waist; his raspy laden breath, cigarette and alcohol smelling and yet never having seemed more resoundly lovable, had pulled you tight against the plush curve of his body, and for once you had felt the contentment and the spiritual reward of being a modest person sp fulfilled with a such a simple embrace; the modest of your messy humanity and intentions, as everyone was, and the refreshment of recognizing that you were two human beings among a species of countless, so fulfilled with the simplicity of the intimacy of one another, and the day was done; and never had you felt more at peace with the simplicity of one another and o existence, saved from the word's own superficial ego.

Bojack looked over at you as his eyebrow raised. "Coat. Right." His hand pressed on his snout as the muscles on his face treamored; he seemed to be collecting himself from some episode of an erratic narrative spewing in the back of his mind, too worried to stop, too connvnced in some odd obligation of following it to break away. "That's what people wear when it's nippy out. One of the first days of the year, too."

He gave you that small, heart melting appreciative grin as it met his tender eyes. "Thank you."

"It is going to be especially cold tonight. It's a good idea for you to have both."

Bojack raised his brows. "Is it?"

"Let me help."

You stepped forward, the both of you now more out and onto the porch than inside of the living room, reached out the tan coat and wrapped it around his shoulders. You felt a certain peaceful calm come over you at the simple action as you brushed the material around his shoulders, himself sticking his arms out as he felt you press the coat on his arms. Though there was a natural intelligent sophification to him anyway, the coat seemed like it added a certain grace and charm as it dressed around his body that was both lovable, clumsy, typical and oddly stoic at the same time.

He let out a noise that was between a rasp and a neigh as he rolled his shoulders and felt the material raise up. You felt a smile trace your lips, as fulfilling as it came, as your hands brushed his shoulder. He shook his head as his mane was taken away at the bottom where it was hidden inside of his coat, your hands threading around the mane threads as they pressed around your fingertips.

"There we go," you murmured, enjoying the simplicity of care for a moment. There was something about him that, as far as you were concerned, begged to fulfill that purpose of loving and caring for him; your romantic attraction and that warmth of admirability for the lovaility of his body was profound as you watched him ease into it. There was something about the way you loved him and had been brought to one another that had caused a resounding extent of something beyond reality that came from profound suffering and pain; an indescriable release where all pain went, pure and accepting of all types, and Bojakc was throwing a combination of saying things that made you feel both good and terrible, as it was with all things, including your relationship with yourself. Bojack grunted as he finished adjusting into the material around his shoulders.

"Now?" he asked, in that vague boyish impatience and eagerness that came out from time to time, as he gracefully swung the key between fingertips. He turned as he met your eyes, expression enlightened as he stretched his arms out; ears perked, adorable and showing off an odd carefree naivety.

You smiled. "Now."

Bojack sighed, intentionally executed dramatically. "Finally. I was starting to think my back bones would fall out before we left."

His head turned in question as his eyes began to search his pockets. "Where did my cigarette go?"

You smirked as your eyes indicated towards the ground.

"Floor. Right. Blind as the bat I dated." He let out a groan as his eyes turned downward. "Waste of a good stick."

"You don't need it. You're going because we want to see the stars, right? No reason to smoke for it. Or do those 'metaphorical drugs' you mentioned."

You tried to keep your tongue stayed, keeping yourself from the suggestion the suspension of him raising anxiety that wouldn't be there unless there were motivations outside of it. Your hands grazed his back, leading him out of the door fully. Though things with him weren't perfect, there was that profound and undeniable sense of togetherness and companionship in the night and through the hours of the days where there was a terrible, harrowing void before; and in that sense you knew this was beyond worth the travel.

"Oh, here comes the FBI girlfriend."

"I just don't think you need it."

"I just like to be able to have the stick with me. It's something to take away some of the tension. Something to blow out, focus on."

Your eyes turned down to where his hands were rested in front of the curve of his stomach as he walked down the stairs with you. His hands were trembling as his fingers trembled through the spaces of his hand. Your eyes turned up to his profile, his pupils dilated into something especially tormented and worried in that worried heart and tormented lfe you knew he held; the residue of how he glowed for you since you realized you had been looking for him in spaces and corners of your life before in small ways and now that he was here, you hardly knew what to do. Though you were inherently and permanently exhausted with existence and in some profound tragedy of what it was and how it was even outside of your situation, somehow, that only caused you to feel all the richer and focused on Bojack in ways you could never imagine that you knew was made richer because of the misfortune outside of how you loved each other.

But he was sick; tired and wretched and tumbling over in some of his own made hells. You were, as well; helpless and unremarkable, forgotten and gone into the void of life and forgotten far before your time.

"I haven't seen you shake as bad as you did this morning in awhile."

Bojack's ears flew back, and he gave you that nervous but attempted causal chuckle as he winced at you nervously again.

"My God, are you trying to trip over yourself and walk through every single staircase in your mind just to try to say one thing about me that makes the day more interesting?"

"Stop it. I'm not attacking you. And you know that."

But Bojack still looked at you defensively, even if it had that odd timid apology in his eyes and that adorability of helplessness.

"So the dumb, fat, plush guy you've been making love to these past few weeks can't smoke because that's the cherry on top of it, is that right?"

"I didn't say that."

He pouted as he turned over to where he has another stuck in his gray pocket, flickering it between stout fingers as the pout on his features threaded to the cigarette, the burn of the stick easing in front of his pout as you watched the flame start.

"Some days are just a day, honey."

His voice, edged and as low with emotion as it was, had such allure to it that you personally were attracted to in every which profound possible way that you felt yourself rendered to speechlessness for a moment as you watched him. You felt something odd and bittersweet come over you watching him; for all the messiness of the conversation, misunderstandings and clear lies of anxiety and misdirection, you found you would have preferred all the painful conflict in the world compared to the emptiness of a meaningless existence; after all, human psychology was a manic string of one concept and thought to the next to depeserlty keep themselves occupied on the vast emptiness of existence otherwise, small island of meaning to one to the next; with him, full and profound chemistry that felt as if it would never burn out.

"I'm smoking them because it's morning, and it's dull, and we just had sex." He paused, then gave a blow. "And you're pretty, which makes me want to smoke. It's a therapy thing. Since real therapy is mostly aimless."

The smoke bellowed around him, raising up around his snout as the fog eased up and over his profile. Something in his eyes darkend and lowered as he thought over the dismissal of his words; he was cerintely self reflective enough to sense the trippings he was making of you.

His hand pressed instantly against the small of your back. You allowed yourself to be pulled in, lips pressed together rin thought. You wanted to be relentlessly flexible for him, as grounded and detailed with meaning as much as he inspired you; to be in the moment, untethered to the baggage of your own life or of fleeting emotions, to not see reality as something bad since it wasn't inhreintly bad, it was just interpreted that way in its inevitable indifferent truth; it was human psychology that was ill, but around him, you felt less so.

"This day is supposed to be fun for both of us. So stop digging for narratives that aren't there, ok?" His voice was tender, edged with an insistence as he turned and looked you over, smoke trailing over his disposition. Life was so impossibly simple but seldom ever made sense in its simplicity; with him, almost a tragic amount, especially with how the wear of your starved and unhealthy body was more than likely to give out sooner rather than later to even come close to the richness folding in front of you; the closest thing that would ever even come close to upheaving the most powerful element in existence; the passage of time and how it turned everything to a memory of stagance.

Your lips pressed together, and then your eyes turned up as you met his vulnerable worried ones. "Am I supposed to not worry about you?"

"I don't know." Bojack's tone raised in vague defense. "Since when do people in Hollywood care about worrying about most people they know?"

"I'll start pretending to not care about your wellbeing if you promise to just be honest from now on about what's happening."

Bojack shoved his way out the door, officially, closing it as he started to make his way down the stairs. You followed as he made his way towards his topless car, sat in front of the entrance and waiting for the both of you as Bojack played with his keys.

"Listen, I understand what you're saying. But I'm not making some weird couple vows first thing in the morning for someone I'm not even dating."

He opened up the car door, looking up at you as he leaned against the slight open tilt of it.

"I know you're adventurous. It's one of the reasons why I even try for you. Because we both know that I'll sit on that couch all day and complain about things as long as you'll give me an audience. You have this, uh-" His voice lowered, somber and low as his hand pressed on his snout while he squinted in troubled thought. He waved his hands in a small circle as he thought. "-Life experience of living in a way that I can't even imagine. And I admire that. But you don't need to try and account for every little thing that you think could possibly be motivated by something not entirely admirable."

"I'm not-"

Bojack raised a hand, wear on his face scrunching. "At the end of the day, what feels so fresh and rich right now is eventually going to fade into something that we probably more than likely won't even understand where we were coming from, and even if we do, it'll feel cheap. Faded. Like everything. Like this time in your life where you think you-" He winced as he looked over at his hands, cramping in trouble in the emotions of his mind "-love me, will be gone, and you won't even know who that person is." His eyes turned up as his concnerd expression based on yours. "No matter what kind of life experience you have, I know we can both bet on that. You must know the way things turn out eventually."

You crossed you arms as you made your way over to Bojack's car, feeling the nippiness of the sharp air ease across the coat. "I'm worried about you."

"Yeah. I can tell. And I'm trying to make it clear to you right now-you shouldn't be." His eyes lowered in thought, and you knew at the core they were dismissive towards his own problems. "Trust me. I know."

"And part of relationship is change." Your eyes turned up to Bojack, and his eyebrows lowered at your words. "And one element of one person's life leads to another; and I know you know that."

He gave you a vague glare. "So what?"

"You won't accept the change. Because you feel its impact. Or the potential of it. And that's what gets to me."

His eyes darkened slightly as he realized the intimacy of what you were speaking was real. He seemed to lose himself for a moment as his almond eyes, black with more than just color, took you in as you made your way to the inside of the car, easing your body inside. His eyes were dimmed with a vague bewildered defense as his ears lowered as he watched you clamor inside.

The odd graceful defense of his feautres that could only come from someone emotionally intelligent began to dim as he watched you ease into the passenger's seat. His eyes became stoic, and with a slight change of the emotion in his expression did he flick the cigarette over to the side of the driveway, beginning to walk his way around the car.

"We can talk about whatever you decide to be worried about when we get home, ok? Let's just pretend like we're ok for a bit and go have fun." Though it was a deflection, it was spoken in a slightly more mature way that spoke of being awareness of his flaws, and you felt some slight reassurance of the acknowledgement of it as he indicated his head into the white leathered seat of his car, leaning his plush body back as he gave a low grunt, easing his body back on the chair as he started the car.

" I just want to make sure that you're safe.. I know that things aren't exactly predictable with you a lot of the time."

He laughed, in a heavy, reflective way as he leaned his body down into the chair, leaning his head backward as he reached to the glove department. What he pulled out was a pair of sunglasses, which he hoisted on the top of his ears, and another cigarette, followed by a lighter, which he lit as he danagled it back to his lips with the same pout of concentration of that of which he had granted it before. Your attraction to his complicated and yet somehow still impossibly soft and alluring disposition overwhelmed you in that moment, and you tried to keep the storm of being cornered far too much with the man beside you with as much control as you could, an ary of worry and intrigue and maddening lust that could easily turn to an unturnable and irreversible mark of love, flowed through you. No amount of emptiness in your life had been able to keep you from that truth. Through the emptiness of your life you had found you had come to crave acitvtes with deep, meaningful and stoic concentration; and as it was, everything with Bojack was that.

"So you want predictable." He rested his chubby elbow on the side of the doors as he flicked on the car. It roared to life, and Bojack's eyes became all the more dim with thought and old age and the wear of lack of care as he kept one hand lazily on the wheel. "Perfect. You want a guy who was a drug addict with a only half consistent career to be predictable."

"Healthy, Bojack," you insisted. "Healthy."

"Listen, you can question me all afternoon long if you want to." He started the car as he eased his foot against the petal. The car started with a low purr as it began to turn back, Bojack turning his head over his shoulder as the car rolled to the gate. "But let's just go, ok? I bought the tickets at a certain time because I didn't think you were the kind to protest about something that would get you out of the usual four walls of big surrounded by the pollution of the cigarette smoke in here every night. Pretty much an extension of manifested smoke room, but-it works." His voice was spoken lower as he continued under his breath, the extension of his loathing clearly wrought in his thought. "With that being said, I don't know how you even put up with it. The streets, I imagine, would be better."

"I like it," you admitted. Your arms pressed further inside of yourself as the cold increased right along with the movement of the car, turning over to the automatic golden gate. Bojack's eyes winced in thought. "It's nice. Reminds me of you."

He paused before he started to make his way out the driveway, worry in his eyes unreadable, dilated between consideration and then self blame, grumpiness, and then worry again. His eyes turned to you as he looked at you with a certain insight, as if seeing you with a new layer for ever new bit of information you revealed about yourself; as if there was ever truly understanding one another or why the two of you were doing this and why it felt it made sense despite logical tehcncialites that you didn't deserve Bojack's attention, and he had no coherent motive to give it. The harshness of reality; people got what they deserved, as human psychology was factual and responded only to what stimulated excitement and disregarded what was grotesque and unimpressive; nothing malicious, just simply was as it was. If human nature was an unself-aware beast itself, you were too lost in being human to realize how destructive, , caging, monstrous, and tragic humanity truly was, though if you could see your own species with your own eyes, you knew the species and its normalized way would be unbearable.

But Bojack granted you that almost impossible achievability of something that was sought by all and achieved by none; peace and confidence and presence of the moment. For once, you didn't spend every moment wondering how to spend the next to know how to appease people, yourself, and to survive. You felt fully confident in the moment, in your experience, for better or not or justified or not by the flawed judgment of others, you couldn't have cared.

For a moment did he not seem like a man that was tormented by intimacy and by taking in the observance of others, bur instead seemed like someone who took comfort in the fact that it existed,, the appreciation brought on by a certain heavy tragic sadness that only came on by one who was truly deprived and aware of himself and of the world; the kind of person who couldn't help see the truth, especially when it was the last thing he wanted.

The gate was opening, and between Bojack turning the dilation of his eyes to you did he focus with a wince over to the open gate, focusing as his hands lazily controlled the wheel while he leaned back as the car began to ease through it. It wasn't until you noticed your arms your losing in on themselves, attempting to shield yourself from the brisk snapping of the wind, that Bojack turned as he focused on the shivering detachment of your body.

"You're freezing," he said, gently. "Here." He began to shrug off his other coat, pulling it off of the neon colored sweater on his body as he started to pull it off his head, brown stomach and happy trial poking out for a moment as the fabric was lifted off of his body while he tugged it over. He shook his mane as he threw it off entirely, breathing under his lip as his teeth poked while he raised a brow dryily and looked over the sweater, coarse mane splaying outward. His other coat was lying half drawn down his arms, the tan on the side, plush stocky body now fully sticking out.

"What are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm giving you my sweatshirt. Before you turn to a popsicle. That wouldn't be a good thing to trail around with me for the day" He reached out his sweater as he started to pull it over your head. You hesitated, but you allowed the natural candor of his caretaker tenancy to fully come out in the ways of which he was comfortable as the sweater wrapped over your body.

"There we go," his masculine voice was honored to a tender whisper as his hands squeezed your arms, causing you to shiver as you readjusted with an extra layer of clothes on your body.

"Thank you." The sweater felt far better than you ever would have guessed even on your best assumptions of how his intimacy felt; irreparably soft, safe, and smelling of all the whiskey tinted, infinite heavy smell of sweat and cologne that was him.

"Don't mention it." His eyes flicked in thought as he turned back to the wheel. "Seriously."

He started the car again from the low stagnant rumble as it roared to life, turning his head backwards as he started to toll it out of the driveway. You leaned your head backward as he began to drive the car towards the end of the golden gate that was dressed with his initials. The smoke trailed from his snout as he gracefully took another swing of the cigarette while he temportaily let go of the wheel while his stout body twisted as the the car left out into the barren street. Though he had seemed jittery that morning, he was far more collected now-as if getting in that car and guaranteeing you would go to the location had brought him to his element. The gate was opened entirely as he rolled his way out. You tried to ignore it, but you could see the way his fingertips were pattering a little too consistently against the side of the wheel in front of him- as if he was physically trying to calm himself in the middle of what should have been an otherwise normal ride.

The car swerved a little too clumsily as one car rolled up from the side of the street by the nearest driveway. Bojack let out a slight abrupt sound of surprise as he abruptly threw the car a little too violently over to the side- a reaction far more over the top than it warranted, even as nervousness of some inner trouble haunted him with his every touch.

"Gah! Sorry." He severed the car back into the middle of the road. His eyes kept wide as he snapped his head over to where the car was still coming out-one that was molded in such a way that it spoke of someone on the same level of wealth as Bojack. Bojack's head snapped forward as he watched where the car finsiehd coming out, the small mouse man in it, dressed in a heavy black coat, offered Bojack an indifferent but cold glare. "That guy out of nowhere, huh?"

You took a shaky breath as he brushed the sweat off of your skin; a natural and tender reaction, all things considered, his teeth poked as his worried eyes turned and looked you over as he eased his hands beside your arms, ones of which were now even firmly more embedded than they had been. "Not particularly, actually."

"Oh, come on, he totally did. Asshole driving around like he knows the place."

"He was just driving out normally."

"Sure."

You wanted to say something-to acknowledge the inherent panic, or at the very least have it acknowledged himself. Whatever it was that he was thinking, it certainly wasn't what he was intending to present. Though he seemed to be an unhealthy, almost admitelley tormented, man by default, you didn't think it would be so much to the point that he was currently unable to focus on something as simple as driving.

But your lips stayed firmly pressed together as the palm trees and buildings went on right along with Bojack as he tried to keep the dilated panic out of his eyes while he started the drive again, knowing that you would learn the hard way if you pushed the man that could play any pretend narrative that he wanted.

Bojack was a liar, even to himself. He was playing dress-up, and you were going along until he decided to come even-or until something forced him to open up with whatever it was that he was desperately tape dancing and hiding against. He wasn't easy, not even for himself, and that was, ironically, the most natural thing about loving him at all-was accepting the fact that it would never be the easy. But, for reasons you wouldn't state out loud, you had never felt alive, or more intertwined with a certain undeniable purpose; or more ready to take anything head on.

But as the car went on, your eyes turning over and noticing the vague shake of his head at times, the dread and small pupils glitning in his expression, the trouble on his features, there was only the small, quiet trail of thought from your end that he wouldn't be destroyed for the action of keeping your grasp against his always uncertain trembling air that had nowhere to land unless you built the home for him to find.

One something you knew for sure; you didn't care what happened to you; you never did. But this time, it was because all of your concern and motivation was directed towards the impossible purity of loving and concerning yourself with everything he was and what could happen to him; the mos delicate and impossible element to hold onto in life of meeting someone that was so rare and pure that it was considered stupid and worthless.

Then, as it was, with cantonment and acceptance, you and all the impossible dressing up of unfathomably complex inner life of human preception was, too.

OOOOOOOO

"Are you going to make us wait until the next coming of Christ, or can we get in these pre-bought tickets sooner rather than later? I swear to God, you get nothing fo buying benefits these days. And we called ahead early!"

Bojack was breathing heavily while he leaned against the counte, elbow leaned in front of him, ears flown back, puffed wrinkles more traced than ever into the bloat under his sleep deprived face. You stood behind him, seeing the very wrought increased anger of him occurring right in front of you, your position taken at his request. He was keeping that dignity together, all things considered; it was the question as to whether ot not he wanted to that was making you curious.

"The exhibition," the turtle greeter spoke from the other side of the counter. He raised an eyebrow in speculation, grey green scales moving upward with the movement.."That's what you came to see?"

"Wait, the galaxy? Yes, that's the reason why we came here. Obviously." He leaned his elbow against the edge of the counter furhter, entire air of body leaned forward in clear impatience.

"And you pre-brought?"

"That's what the entire idea of buying something beforehand means. Or do you think we ask for something we didn't already order for fun?"

The turtle's eyes wandered over his body, slowly and an increased wall of clear suspicious perception. "You smell of alcohol. Drinking isn't allowed in the exhibit."

"So we're discriminating people for how they smell now?"

"Was the purchase shown on our records?" the turtle receptionist turned his eyes towards his screen, movements slow under the specification only he could manage.

"Yeah, of course it is. I just want to see the way the stars look. And I wanted to bring my girlfriend." He chuckled in that superficial, nervous way as he tried to offer the turtle a vague ease of charming insistence from the raise of his brows and poke of his small grin. "I know human psychology is so cursed with mundanity from existence that almost anything is preferred, so it's not wonder that I want the easy experience and access to this. Bring my girl along." Bojck's eyes, more life in them than previously now that there was plenty of destruction, turned as his own features looked over to you for a moment; tentative, looking for any climb of approval he could get, and searching for any drastic missteps from his end. "You get it."

Bojack had been especially sweet since he had come in, treating you more like someone who has a sense of therapeutic ownership to within the void of existence, rather than something borrowed that wasn't his while he was alive in existence. You knew that he was prone to self sabotage; you took a breath as you turned your head towards the side and looked over through one of the walls of the museum, sky scsrper high, cared in details of stars and dancing plump bodies.. You were carrying his sweater in your hands now, having taken it off the second you had entered the hot exhibit. It was, truthfully, the last thing you had felt like doing, but there was a certain kind of panic that seemed as if it was strung along from Bojack's undeninale anxiety, one of which he still had yet to admit.

The turles' eyes seemed particularly slow as his fingers tapped against the edge of the keyboard. Bojack didn't bother hiding his impatience as he have a quick sharp breath, leaning his head against the edge of the countertop, a raspy low groan leaving his lips as the threads of his mane fell in front of his face of the chop of hair that sat on his head. You hesitated for a moment, but you reached out a hand and slowly began to caress the side of the back of his shirt, right where his lovehandles spilled out and stretched beside the edge of his belt. When he relaxed slightly at your touch, rather than pushing you away like you had expected, you took it as a sign that intimacy was currently wanted.

You made your way to the side of the counter as you leaned your elbows onto the counter until the both of you were eye level as Bojack's eyes turned to meet yours, expression turning from impatient to that tender helplessness as he met yours. Your gaze meeting his as you met his handsome and unsatisfied pout.

"A turtle doing our entry fee that we preoredered. And as slow as they come," he whispered to you, just enough so that only you could hear it-though he was close enough that no doubt the turtle could hear regardless, and Bojack didn't seem to care.. The turtles' eyes glinted slightly in knowing, signifying that he had, in fact, heard the both of you. You found it funny; there was a glint of mich callousness of dark humor in Boajck's eyes as he met yours. "And wearing a goddamn turtle neck."

"Shush. Be nice," the advice came out more like a humored whisper as you felt his hot breath laced against your face while he leaned closer to you.

"I don't need to be nice. I could give this guy a run for everything he's worth if I wanted to. The guy's a walking gag. I mean, seriously-a turtle working a job that's meant to be fast paced? It's a walking punchline."

You let out a soft shush, though the smile that gazed your features was all he needed to know that you were enjoying the sense of humor you shared just as well between the both of you. You leaned forward as you caught your lips against his own; after a moment of hesitancy, Bojack returned it with an awkward grunt of his lips, lovable and uncertain.

"Way to wipe off the unapologetic spite off my face," he murmured against your lips. You could feel his smile graze against your mouth as he leaned his snout forward and caught your lip between his own, genuine sound of a rasped and content mumble on your lips as his air depleted for a moment by you.

"I'll kiss every smirk off your face for the rest of the afternoon if it means you'll be open. Healthy."

You could feel Bojack tremor vaguely under your words and insistence; though you tried to keep the walk with him as casual as possible, there had been small hints now and then of a genuinely large and vast struggle that he could't execute. He gave a soft mumble and a breath, readjusted, and then pulled himself away from you with a small and tender smirk.

"Nice try, butterball."

He pushed his hand against the back of your head and threaded you closer for a moment, despite the words. The turtle cleared his throat, the busy tapping that he had been accustomed to doing pausing as he raised up tired, wrinkled and heavy eyes to look between the both of you. Bojack let out a raspy chuckle as he turned his head up towards the turtle, flashing him that nervous grin that held far too much humanity for him to ever be someone who could properly execute the attempt of the sway away from it.

"What, is this the best action you've seen all year? Sorry if it's too much for you. If you want, I can put a little extra Bojack spice in it so its extra memorable when you want to pull that virgin look out of your eyes."

The turtle's eyes widened for a moment, defiance lightning in his eyes.

"Want us to leave?"

"Bojack, you don't have to trigger him. It's alright. I'm not trying to push you. You don't have to deter from this."

"Who's deterring?" Bojack gave another abrupt laugh as he turned his eyes over to you, wincing in a vague mock as he did so. "I'm not deterring."

The turtle raised his brows in an exasperated fashion, clearing his throat as he turned his head back towards the screen, eyes lowering as he did so. Bojack turned his head back to you as he you that tentative, shy grin; as mocking as he could be at times, there was something about him that was too stoic and tender to ever properly go through with the spite entirely. He took to, grazing his hands against your back, though you could feel how his hands cramped away from the caress now and then, fingertips cramping away from the middle part of your back halfway, uncertain and trembling.

"This is why I wanted to choose a job where I would have the chance of being able to choose if I was surrounded by people's interaction or not. If there's no direct benefit in having access to people, you're more than likely just exposing yourself to more people's flaws where there is no reason for it." The turtle's voice was distracted, slow and with a vague sense of disgust as he spoke with distraction while the slow look of his eyes eased over the screen. He blinked slowly as he finished processing whatever task he was concerned with in terms of admitting the both of you, then turned his large and wrinkled eyes up to the both of you and managed a nod. "Thank you, then, for the reminder. Your tickets are all set for entrance."

"Really? After all that?" Bojack gave another belly deep laugh, shoulders turning in satisfaction as he did so. He turned his lowered, complacent and muddled eyes over to you, reassured for the moment in the sense of reassurance he got from the turtle and his own mishappen nature. "Told you They're not going to push away a star. Our arrival is the news that'll be surrounding this place will be the most traffic they've had in a decade. Boring museum owners love this kind of news pap drama." Bojack turned his reassured expression to the turtle, his eyes still muddled with a foggy confidence. "Ain't that right, scales?"

The turtle rolled his eyes as he craned his long and wrinkled neck back, though the fact that he didn't deny what Bojack was saying, despite hearing it, confirmed that there was at least some truth to it; or at least, he saw no point in having an argument about it.

As the tickets were printed on the small machine beside the turtle, the few moments of feeling Bojack's caresses against your skin, were the few things to clear your headspace from the incessant worry you found yourself turning in and out of now and then-you eyes turning over to Bojack, your attachment and wonder of hm unceasing through your questions of the tender romanticism he held that was devoid of depth of wherever you tried to find it otherwise-and the occasional superficial happily drunken laden man that took Bojack now and then for the sake of ebing in denial of anything going on other than the easily brainless and superficial. You enjoyed getting lost in the sensation; the feeling of his fingertips beside you, the way his handsome features became all the more alluring from the poke of his teeth and he wide question of his eyes, the allure of his clear conflicted humanity, your own turning of searching his and being saved from the ego of others who worried themselves with the ego and exhausted themselves rather than the incessant humanity that stood in front of you and the natural meaning of clarity it came from.

The turtle's eyes glinted against the mundane information on the screen as his eyes narrowed behind the glasses that sat on the age of his wrinkled nose. A couple of more clicks, Bojack resting his hand still on the counter like a particularly childish and still troubled spirit, you doing the same as your hand kept intertwined on his, feeling the same actions to fall into the natural rhythm of the entire complex life that came by being known and having meaning and connection with someone. By emulating his naturally confident, albeit entitled, and carefree disposition, you felt not only endowed to his admittley more stable sense of identity, but also more in rhythm with a sufficient meaning.

His teeth were poking out in that pout as he watched the turtle finish the ticket process, his eyes worried and glinted in adorability, pure and vulnerable in question. And yet he seemed more confident, playful as would be expected for someone with what Bojack had in his life, and now and then a mischievous glint was turned towards the turtle while he waited for him to finish; you could see the life flashing through Bojack's eyes, the conflict, blame, worry and overthinking.

The turtle was clearly becoming increasingly more nervous as Boajck lifted his eyes up at him with his own questioning small grin.. The turtle turned his head towards the receipt that came buzzing out of the side of the machine by the computer. He lifted it up as he snatched it upward and outward, crumpling it between his fingers. He then leaned it out towards Bojack, who lifted his head up fully, eyes glinting in curiosity, you following behind as you stepped back a few paces and leaned your cheek by his shoulder as the turtle handed them to him with a tired and frustrated expression.

"Tickets. Just as you ordered. Took me awhile to find them, is all." His foggy, aged eyes turned over to you. "If the two of you are doing as it seems you are, consider yourselves very lucky. The likeness of two people being together that have the chemistry and are meant to is incredibly unlikely, though the matches are far and countless, very little meet."

"Ok, buddy. Thank you."

Boajck's tone was low and tired, not unlike his heavily hooded eyes as he looked down at the two tickets.

"I understand that we're a bit all over the place today. We've had some reports about some unfavory materials and otherwise being brought into our facility that we less than approve of as of late, especially with today's events. We've had to put in extra work to make sure that we can keep things vaguely clean today. Especially, as I'm sure the both of you can imagine, with the certain types of people and their status that are coming in today."

"I know it's part of common polite courtesy to dispel any statement that suggests to the other party that they're feeling discomfort or inquenency, but let me tell you." Bojack lifted his eyes towards the turtle, low and hooded and dry with emotional exhaustion."You can say that again."

The turtle's eyes flashed. You could tell he was struggling to keep himself calm. You almost felt sorry for him, but you couldn't deny the michcviolous freedom that you shared together felt far sweeter-especially knowing with that indescribable feeling that it had been dearly bought with the past week or so of chipping away at that shock Bojack had intentionally gone through that came along with the idea that he even had anything to process or to accept, to change for, in the first place. You felt free with him, but even sweeter than that was the way he clearly felt freer within himself. He crumpled up the ticket as he placed it in his front pocket.

"To the left, and then to the right," the turtle insisted. His voice was strained, and, due to the natural troublemaker tenancy spell he was in; perhaps partly due to his anxiety, but more than likely was general narcissism, the serene smoke on Bojack's face only increased.

"And then to every other corner of the area until we see everything? That's how museums work, right? Or any building in existence."

Your hands laced around his arm as you directed him towards the large marbled hallway.

"Come on," you whispered, though humor traced the edges of your lip as you started to walk down it. Not because you were enjoying triggering the old and troubled age of the turtle, but more so because of the clear extent Bojack was getting out of being able to at least respond to the pain of letting you in with a more nuanced performance. Bojack tripped as he allowed himself to be pulled by your abruptly, choppy black bangs bouncing against his forehead as he followed you.

"I think you're the one that needs to come on. That was hilarious." His arm rested into your hand, his other hand lacing into the interconnected part of your fingers; a sweet gentleness simplicity, one of which came out once he was done with the wayward way he went about protecting his pain with the idea of superiority of a world he knew had never loved him.

"I think we should keep the commentary to the apartment and to making love at night. About the people we meet around us, anyway." You leaned forward as you pressed a kiss to the side of his cheek, round and full, irreparably adorable.

"C'mon. Where's the fun in that? Then you don't get any reactions. That's the best part. Showing them where the stick hits when they try to tell you how they think they can talk to you. I could see the way he was looking at me before we even finished coming in properly. And believe me, he needed to be reminded that I'm not just an entertain piece for what I'm sure is usually impossible mundane otherwise"

His hands squeezed against your skin for a moment, vulnerable and pure eyes turning as he looked you over , teeth poked gently.. "Besides, sitting in my apartment and doing something like that would suggest more time together. Deeper thought, conversation-" His eyes winced as he circled his hand into the air in front of him to show his erratic train of thought as he flicked his eyes away from you in that timid fashion. "And we're not-seeing each other."

He didn't speak it as if it was either a disappointment or a gain; only a simple factual statement that took him a moment to remember. The words struck you, though you managed to react quickly enough that it didn't show that they affected you. You gave a curt nod. But you felt something turn to black inside of you; and beyond that, the unforgiving reminder that what Bojack was giving you wasn't a home; he wanted it to be, and by nature you felt that it was, but it was only one of the countless messy and conflicted elements that made up your life that led you, eventually, back down and over to the road.

"Right."

Two guards, lizards that stood several feet high with their arms behind their backs as the police outfit dressed their bodies tightly, were standing at the entrance of the rest of the museum; a large, skyscraper size door, looming over the both of them and their stoic bodies and hard eyes. Distinctly, you could hear the brief sounds of what sounded like artificial galactic sounds of echoes that seemed to come from chasms deep inside the wide walls inside.

"Uh-oh," Bojack murmured, a smirk dressing his snout as his hand gripped your elbow. More playful, confident, cocky now. His eyes turned as he looked at you with the raise of his brow and eyelids lowered into a heavy confidence."Company is here. Scaly type. Remember that totally new awesome thing I told you about?"

"No."

"Well, it's pretty straightforward. They're the kind of guys with the attitudes of someone who is really bent on making sure they keep this place their version of in you're the kind of person who likes that kind of trouble, you'll enjoy it."

"And are you?"

Bojack's eyes betrayed his troubled inner nature, small dilated pupils turning up as he thought it over for a moment, and you caught not for the countless time the depth of his entanglement of a poetic and entangled detailed and fully alive and depthful realized mind; and not for the countless time did you feel your breath taken away taking him in; an entire life with him flashing in front of you eyes full of resounding emotional depth of detail and physical adventure alike intertwining into an entire life together of such profound emotional complexity that it would have killed you with love to live it, and killed you with emptiness to have it taken away after feeling the idea of it.

But he had told you you weren't seeing each other, and you believed him in full.

His hands pressed further against your arm, and this time you could feel that undeniable strain of possession; executed further by the grip of anxiety that dressed his hand, even as he had so clearly and openly rejected you.

OOOOOOOOOOOO

Black, uncertain waves of panic were his enemy that day; this time not something that was easily familiar, terrible and hard as it was, but ultimately familiar pain against himself; this one was turned into something far more challenging and beyond himself, something that demanded an awareness and heaviness outside of himself that had consequences and awareness beyond what he could understand-but the way his body and mind intertwined was punishing him did it all for him.

You were just another lay. A really good, undeniable satisfying lay. And you were staying for awhile-maybe the two of you could even go along with the idea that you were dating for a time. That was, Bojack felt, at least to some extent, the least that he could give the desperate, uncertain and lost look in your eyes that spoke of more lost and challenging days than he was sure he could ever imagine-or would want to/

But a lay was a lay, and lays weren't worth much more consideration than to be casually dined, entertained, and sent on their path, where you would be forgotten by him in only a few more just as equally drunken foggy and impulsive hookups later, with the casual and sloppy label of girlfriend to follow for the sake of his own peace with reminding himself from one melancholic step to the other that he was who he was, things as they were, and there was nothing to be done about it; there never had been, and the emptiness that followed his life was welcome with his boyish and graceful eyes and the poked teeth of his lifted grin. That much he knew like the back of his hand, having done the same tried and dried routine so many times before that it had become as common to him as the polluted air that molded his lungs from his drinking and smoking; and it was all him, and for the longest time Bojack could remember, he wasn't bothered with much except for what felt like him-at the very least.

You had been around for some time, and that made him feel queasy, despite having plenty of women far before you- but there was something depthful about you, profound and extensive to something in him that made Bojack feel it to an almost sickly degree, and that made the nervousness and the desire to turn you out quicker and more demanding than Bojack would have liked, because even the intensity had a sense of admittance to it as to what was going on; and even that was astounding disortentining. For once, Bojack was grateful for the mundanity and impossible mind numbing and predictable emptiness of existence; his mind and heart and enfolded so many worlds in front of it that could only come from the wide eyed an disconnected out oc touch of reality of a child that he had felt so disoriented lately that he was grateful for any extent of logical reasoning.

Buthe felt calm, all things considered, at the end of each day, and it was that grounding that he had at the end of the day that was the only thing to break up the bewildering overestimation of something being ripped out of him of knowing you and feeling like he was discovering things about himself and his character in kind; the only thing that could enflame that fire out of him. He knew you would be gone soon enough. Like with most things he encountered, respect was hardly on the menu of things he felt he owed you.

One thing he was learning about himself more than anything else about his time spent with you; Bojack has always been good at deceiving. That in and of itself was a sign that what he shared with you wasn't special, and therefore wasn't worth feeling guilty about. That was the wall that he was building in his fuddled and foggy mind, and he had lost strength in fighting it.

What he hadn't realized was just how good he was at blatantly lying in the face of someone he had made love to for the past few days; and though, like all things he was doing with you, it was only reminiscent of everything he had ever done with other woman, what he felt with you felt like an entirely different practice; like everything else before had only been an empty mold of something empty and dancing practicing for the real thing, and now that he had it, he could feel the fullness of an entire life that was behind how your bodies intertwined and the energy that made it so much more than just an action; and that was all Bojack's life has been curated into before-empty, soulless actions, and leading himself to be as such in kind.

Whether or not he loved you, he didn't know. But what he did know that, like with any given element in his life, he didn't trust you. Though the undeniable chemistry was fierce, he had had plenty of chemistry with women before. The sex had been a huge majorty of what you had shared, and it was those fmaialir patterns of brguning superficiality that had endered him fairly indifferent to to whatever kind of remarkable newfound spirituality could have been found between you otherwise.

You were just another lay. He repeated that belief to himself countless times over even as you had kissed the edge of his cheek, the action leaving what felt like a physical trail of warmth of meaning to the feel of it, training in its impact long after it was gone, and leaving him in something that was shifted to something not enduring, but impossibly impactful and warm into his tripping and twisted black melancholy, and for a moment did he have full and grounded meaning.

He wouldn't have been able to lie to anyone he loved. And he had lied to you enough times throughout the morning that by the time he had made his way to the museum, his lips had been rendered numb with the way they left his mouth; and he remembered himself in his entirely again, and as such, so did his wandering of his feelings for you.

When he had heard from his drug dealer that the only place they would be able to meet him would be at the middle of the event of the auditorium museum, he had spent the majority of the time in his house throwing a tantrum, breath having, an occasional foot stomp, some raising of his voice.

"That doesn't make any sense. The middle of a public area is the best place for dealing drugs?" His hand had been gripped on the phone, pacing in the middle of the neon pool lit area as the illumination of the light eased into the living room.

He had left you curled in the middle of the grey sheets, his sweat laden arms waking after a few hours of holding you from making love, you content with being left disoretneied and left into the quiet of the room for the time being, as it was with the natural energy and response to things, even with people's entire existences; when someone was left to apathy from the world, the person became low energy and inactive in kind, and he could tell that night all too well that he could have just as well have picked up up from slumber in the middle of the night and left you out in front of the door and you would have hardly had it in you for protest.

"It's the only place where we won't be suspected. I know it doesn't make sense."

"That's the only thing you've said tonight that does. How many feathers are in your brain instead of those wings?"

His drug dealer, a swan of a surprising amount of caliber, had spoken with a posed grace that had almost made Bojack feel embarrassed in his own easily mishappen comparison. Ironically, that had only made him feel more frustrated the more he had been molded into disbelief at the telling that he would have to go to such a public area; and do it openly and with the idea that he successfully convinced you without your insightful eyes causing him disturbance of where he knew you would see his entangled intention for everything it was worth; anything for his cowardly nature to hide from you and any stimulation of what you were bringing out of him.

"I'm not doing business with you if you talk to me like that. I'm a woman trying to navigate in business, just as you are."

"Really? And the money isn't something that would manage to get yourself over whatever little petty sayings are made here and there?"

"Bojack."

He had rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. "Fine. But only because you sound super cute. For a drug dealer. I wasn't aware that they were even allowing woman to do these things."

A laugh trailed from the other side of the phone. "Fair enough. I'm flattered, by the way. I'll take the love and the apprecation where I can get it. Pathetic, maybe, but human nature dosen't give the average much choice."

His ears had lifted. His eyes had flicked over to the bedroom cracked door where you lay. For now, he only felt the desperation of need for reassurance in the "I can imagine." His dry eyes lowered, admribale in a sense that he was clearly not profound of his predictable cope, as his eyes turned over to where he could see both Los Angeles' lights and the neon pool poking through the pink curtains. He winced as he walked his way forward and to the front of it, turning his hands beside the pink plastic curtain as he looked over the balcony with the neon light; it had had a new sense of always turning emotion into it since Bojack had allowed your general air and disposition to welcome itself into its truth. "Does this mean you'll be ok with the risks, then?" Bojack's teeth poked as he placed one hand on his arm, eyes wincing as he watched the the plastic pink curtain turn over his vision again. "I imagin you must know about the idea of how paranoid the law has ben lately about-" He gave a soft breath of thought, turning his eyes up as he did so, and then sighed out; "Everything, really."

"You think I don't have the wild card in me? I do sell drugs, and under the counter. I got you."

He let out a raspy chuckle. It was nervous,gentle, but an understanding had been met that the both of them agreed there would be far more than just professional exchanges. The promise of two of his addictions being satisfied in one night was enough to make his knees buckle.

Needless to say, he had been hard between his legs by the time he had turned off the phone; there was a freedom to the fact that he was betraying that human purity he had felt with you. But as he had tentatively turned off the phone call and had made his way inside to where your body was twisted and entangled in the gray sheets, the gold of your entangled hair twisted and slick against your cheek and the gray sheets of your lovemaking twisted between legs and over your hips, as he had tentatively eased himself down and had taken the cramped and curled gray sheet and pulled it up and over both of your bodies with a soft breath, wrapping his chubby arms against your tentatively before his expression, worn and buried with worry had eased onto the top of your head, he had wondered where the physical enlightenment originated from; and it wasn't the familiar answer he wanted it to be.

True to his sexual imagination that stayed him like a starved dog regardless of whether he wanted to or not, the delicate form of the swan figure had made his mouth water, especially with the validation he assumed it would give his otherwise blackened and disoriented headspace. Her soothing voice had granted him a certain desperate fantasy that interlaced his vision from the other side of the phone even as he had spoken to her. She spoke of the details of how to find her for the exchange bluntly, as if it was the most obvious fact, talking as if she were referring to a concept as simple as how to change out his garbage.

"I admire our confidence," he had stated as he leaned against the counter, teeth poking through his lip as he had allowed his usual lust driven expression to dress his features. She had let out a thrilling laugh, especially shrill because of the way it danced through her long throat.

"I admire your straightforward speech with what you want," she flirted, openly.

His teeth grazed the edge of his lip. He had imagined what it felt like to have her withered underneath him; it felt empty, disgusting, and full of overly familiar patterns of his past empty life in contrast tot he gradual unfolding of profound richness of quality that you inspired out of him; and he loved it.

"I admire you for admiring me."

She had proceeded to state that the middle of the museum was the only place where it was quiet enough, and yet people would be distracted enough to not notice how they would go after each other in the exchange. She happened to have a job there working for curious people like you and Bojack on the day of the event. Bojack had temporarily felt his blood go cold when she had mentioned the exact museum. The confidence and thickened lust had left his expression entirely as the stagnant walls had briefly blurred together, dancing against the black blur of his eyes. But as it was with all things that triggered Bojack, as it was with most for someone as troubled as him that either perceived trouble or constructed it or had someone else bring it on, he knew all too well that it was about accepting it, and moving past it; the panicked nature of how he felt the desperation to have the current trouble he was in was dar too demanding. His hand pressed on his forehead, eyes winced as he turned his expression down and thought over how to proceed further without trailing any terrible memories. He needed to stay as the familiar memory of himself, but to not dare to tread too far into the emptiness.

To make matters worse, such as the way it always did in the quickened romantic patterning of his mind that flew like mania at countless times an hour- most especially when he got caught in his lost headspaces such as the way he was now-he imagined the event would be far from distant from where he had allowed his body to pressed up against Sarah Lynn's pale skin and trembling limbs that had vibrated at a million miles per hour with an energy he had always found addicting, drugs blurring his sense of much of anything together-the preferred suicidal man's wish.

"You there?" she had inquired. Bojack had lifted himself from the counter as he swept a hand through the chobby bangs that sat on the top of his head. His breathing hadn't ben unlike the distilled beating that formed on the edge of his chest, hand kept on his forehead, pupils dialed as he had looked in front of him.

"One second, ok?" He had closed his eyes, troubled as he turned his head to the side. "This isn't the DMV. No one's waiting in line behind me."

"Time is mine too." Her soothing voice now held an edge to it that caused Bojack to lift his eyes upward towards the ceiling as he felt a continued ringing in his ear. "Not everything is about what you need."

He had nervously scratched the edge of his cheek. There was a permanent markt there from the amount of times he had subconsciously picked at i-all times of affection and emotional devastation always being at the forefront.

"Believe me, I'm reminded every day."

"Are you?"

His scattered mind searched for a response. "Sharp tongue, huh?"

There was a small breath, the sound of papers scattering. Bojack's hand had found its tender place beside this robe, turning with worry as he watched the current emptiness of the doorframe of where you were, then turning back to the living room space as eyes winced and ears lowered, heart thudding significantly.

"Bojack, do you want the drugs or not?"

He felt his mind temporarily tap into a foggy unknowing as he turned to the pamphlet that sat on the edge of the counter. He lifted it up as he gazed at the advertisement. From the description of the starry night that would, based on the pictures and description that grazed the side of the photo example, be taking up the entirety of the space rather than just on a small square screen. It wouldn't be unlike the screen he had seen that night. He could still distinctly remember the way his mouth had gone dry as the words had begun to blur together as he had attempted to read them the night he had thought of relapsing again; and so shortly after he had finished making love to you while attempting to understand that profound warmth of undressing that making love to you, holding you, a sense of profound surreality to it that was beyond just the observation of the orange light when it met into daylight morning-far beyond anything remarkable he had ever known.

Though he felt as if he had been plunged under water temporarily, he had somehow managed to hear her distinct question of whether or not he was ok with the location. He had pressed his lips together once, twice, as he tapped his tongue against the pamphlet and tried to keep himself grounded in his panic. As he felt himself coming outside of his body enough that it seemed a struggle to respond, he realized that, even now, he wanted to preform some level of collected charm for the sake of one of the few things Bojack was worth; and he only saw worth from the superficial-which was charming the woman he endowed with his troubled aciron. But he could tell, even as he was forming words somehow through the bits of his numb lips, that he was cracking under his response, voice wavering and weak in a way he couldn't be bothered to feel ashamed about; the sensation was too weak, too demeaning, for the time being except to do much but accept it.

"There's nowhere else?"

His voice cracked. He felt as if he was speaking from a different body as a sensation that was all too familiar with him the more that his life continued to go on started to overcome him; that black numb of denial of thinking about anything too painful, too deeply, to a nonconsensual degree. He had tormented himself further by executing in his mind's eyes the way her face was no doubt lowered, eyes against her slender white face in disapproval-the same stereotype of what he would have expected of anyone who witnessed him not having it all together, and he certainly never had as much as he did having to come to terms with whatever it was you were forcing him to discover.

If Bojack had learned anything, it was that everyone's love was thickly conditional, and he had long since learned that if he didn't learn to keep a certain griphold on a stable, charming presentation of himself that was easy to swallow, he would very well lose whoever little he had-or whatever little he had. The world didn't give out love or resource freely; and Bojack had become wise enough to see that; it was as it was, beyond any capacity for denial.

For the time being, it seemed as if everything was quite literally melting together, as if mocking him for every way that he escaped pain that seemed to never truly leave him alone. He should've been used to abandonment and lack of peace by now-instead, it had become a beast more maddening than ever as his life went on, becoming more cracked, more demanding and wearing on his sanity as he got older, rather than less.

"Nowhere else," she bluntly after a moment. He distinctly heard the sound of what seemed like her fingers tapping impatiently against the desk. "And by the way, I would suggest that you make sure that you make it a secret as possible. As in-you're going to have to buy the tickets and essentially attend the event. Otherwise, it's going to be suspicious when you decide to show up out of nowhere for no particular reason. Especially the same night that the event is happening."

Bojack's eyes widened. "What? How much is that?

"Based off of the rarity of the event, I would say about several thousand."

He let out a nervous cackle. "Several thousand-for seeing lights?"

He briefly heard her lips pop. "It's a rare event. If you've been keeping up with the world, I'm sure you could guess as to what."

"And it's a rare event for someone like me to give a phone call like this that drags onthe time of day, much less my business."

"That's the way the system is set up. If you don't like it, you can find somewhere else."

Bojack hadn't bothered muting a dramatic moan as he had leaned further against the counter. The neon light was sweeping through the pink curtains, the plastic hitting against one another lightly, and if anything, Bojack felt comfort in the emptiness; it was miserable, and Bojack loved miserable; in misery, there was nothing to lose, and the fear of mortality was hardly something concerned with.

."Do you just keep around every smack and crack whenever you reel someone in and hope for the best for some sucker to come alone?"

"Sorry to break it to you, but this is going to be a little bit more expensive than your average 'this and that' smuggle your drugs squall." Another impatient tap against the counter. "Weren't you just at a rehab, anyway, Horseman?"

His eyes widened an inch. "Talbots really do make it their business to try and tell everybody every little goddamn thing that happens to me, don't they?"

"I'm only informing you."

"You're doing a decent job at that. Thank you." His fingertips had squeezed beside the edge of his robe while he trailed his mind over in thought. "Is that all, then? Just decide, get the tickets, go and you'll smuggle in whatever I need?"

"That would be the idea of the matter. This is how the system works currently. There's no other way we can get things to work out or turn around at the time."

"Uh-huh. Thank you. I get it." His eyes winced in that tremor of a puffy eyed and tormented way as he turned his head back over to where the masterbed door was open, his fingertips gripping beside the edge of his robe while he thought over in his churn of thought, the soft pinches of fabric of material grazing on his fingertips. "There isn't any change there's going to be danger or anything similar going on going about this, is there?"

"Horseman, I only need a decision."

"Yeah, I know, it's just-" He gave a breath intake as his hand pressed on his forehead, disposition tender and conflicted as his vulnerable eys eased down. His conflicted eyes turned back over to the open master bedroom door. He was aware, more than ever, of that certain air and energy that you carried with you; that odd sweetness that came from some inherent gift of being alive in existence that only came from those that had been taken from the indulgence of life others were granted and were instead granted with an odd astral sweetness that came along with profound suffering. "I have this-woman with me. She has this kind of air where she's been through a lot. More than I understand. I get this energy from her that she can only take so much, you know. She has this mood to her, gifts, in a weird way, where its clear that she got a lot of wisdom from her suffering, virtues, in a weird way, that indulgent assholes like me didn't."

"Not sure what the problem is with your girlfriend, then."

Bojack's eyes eased up into further wince as he kept his eyes on the half open door, ears lowered.

"No, she's not my girl-"

His breath hitched, but he remembered that certain look in your eyes; there was an emotion in it that reminded him of a strange lesson or narrative you carried inside of you that reflected from your eyes and into his general understanding of what despair felt like, of being caged and to have pain turn from the inside out to the point of nonexistence, and he felt there was a lesson in that; and beyond that, something of a natural tormented inner tormented bonding, and he gound the black was accepting in the wake of your intervention together, exhaustions aside. Bojack gave another breath, restarting as he turned his troubled eyes down. "But I don't know how much more she can take. I was just wondering if it would trigger anything inside of her."

"You're smuggling drugs in times where there's already plenty of rumor going around enough as it is, Horseman. What do you think the answer is?"

Black annoyance flew through him, and Bojack felt a fire of black turn against the inside of himself. He took his cellphone and hovered over the hang up button, pressing his finger against it just enough to feel the slight pressure of his thumb on top of the button to hear the vague sound of the click. Silence and the sound of the humming of the outside pool were all that was left in the wake of the silent end of the night, with nothing but the reflective truths that were eased into the four walls that would repeat in their stagance and come and roll inward, release and then come again in the few things that made up human existence.

Regret followed when he realized that he didn't, in fact, want to cut off the voice messaging to get the drugs. "Still there?" His hand cramped into an awkward curl against his palm, ears lowered and eyes winced as he pressed the phone back to his face.

"Done with your tantrum?"

"It wasn't a tantrum. It was an expression of disapproval of your speech and dialect, especially the context of it. And it's also-weird times. Hard night."

"I imagine it must be, for someone like you to be taking a woman that you described in."

A vague sharp insult eased in Bojack's chest. "What do you mean?"

"You said she's homeless?"

Bojack's wet hardened eyes turned back to your door. He felt his tired, jaded and somber reflective air of someone who had long since become weary of existence turn over him, switching between anger, then exhaustion, annoyance and then anger again.

"I don't see how that's relevant to any of this." His eyes lowered into further empty annoyance. "You do realize that this conversation will be over soon rather than later if you keep on track?"

"You're exactly the way they talk about you." She chuckled, her voice laced with a certain kind of amusement. Somehow, the statement made Boajck feel worse. He could sense the way her voice was becoming increasingly more confident in the wake of how he was falling apart. An onslaught of a wave of self-loathing threatened his attempt to keep himself together as much as he felt he could.

"Take it or leave it, big man." This time her voice seemed edged with cocky mocking; taking Bojack for all of the trembling insecurity he was and leaving him as he wrecked self assigned toy in her wake.

"I'm not a big man. And it's almost embarrassing that you feel it's appropriate to call me that."

A small hum of a vague mumble left the woman's lips on the other side. "She's clever, to be able to make it this far in life with how meaningless her life must have been. Unkind."

"Yes, she-"

"We're such a tormented species. There's something about the emptiness that just inherently torments us. To be on this earth and to be human seems like a natural cruelty."

Bojack's worn and heavy eyelids kept over his expression, and though he could feel that turn that come over with his black anxiety and torment of the future and of you, for the time being he just felt that exhausted disassociation with trying to come to terms with any reasonable way he could go about taking the pain, bewilderment and worry he had for and with you and continue to use it as something to aid the both of you, rather than something to destroy the both of you. The truth of existence was the truth, whether it was accepted or responded to reasonably or not, and it had caught up tp the both of you in kind.

"So, all that to say is, and I know with all the weird rumors flying around as of late, you could allow yourself to trip and worry over someone like that woman you have with you currently, even as it's clear that she's managed to be able to take care of herself. Or just allow yourself to fall further into that addiction that I know for a fact you haven't been taking the good way."

His eyebrows knitted. "How do you know that?"

"You're in the public eye, Bojack. Everyone knows everything."

Bojack closed eyes for a moment, keeping his body as steady as he had been able to with the half surreality of the alcohol and the half swaying of his disoriented exhaustion anyway as he leaned against the counter. His eyes had darted towards the edge of the door frame to his bedroom-a woman had invited had been occupying his bed that afternoon before he had taken to lying down with you for the night in a more more focused and romantic, meaningful fashion, and he had caught the slender flash of her leg while it had flashed out from the side of the doorframe as she had left when Bojack had become jaded and tired from the messy and flawed destruction the woman gave him from whatever far more slow and meditative slow revealing of whatever it was that was causing himself to be caught into your rhythm.

You had spent the day curled up on the pink deck chairs outside, curled up against them with your hands eased beside the cup, the red of your eyes glimmering and questioning while the messy wrought of your hair and the inherent helpless mishappen disposition you worried following Bojack as he had spent the afternoon tying his hands beside the woman, her eyes entangled into a fog and herself drunken and swaying in the middle of her half drown consciousness with stimulants while she kept her hands by his love handles and entangled herself by his body and her heated mouth pressing beside his lip-Bojack letting out heated and uneven rasps and low chuckles as he convinced hismelf he was in control as much as he had ever been, keeping himself strung onto the practice of the meaninglessness. When his lowered and cocky eyes had turned now and then to the window, he had seen your helpless form curled onto the deck chair, and the light in his eyes had dimmed as he felt that chocking rich meaning coming out of him for a moment that only came from the specific way of loving someone and meeting someone who inspired it; and then with a few more physical tosses and turns from the distraction that convinced himself he was as in control as ever did he chuckle as he pushed the woman out a little while later. As usual with his regular shame of how he went about his secretive business that he didn't even enjoy very much, he had wanted to keep it as suffocated and as private as he much as could have managed-just enough of a reminder that he had become a master of the emptiness, and nothing needed to come along to save him.

The way the memory of a few hours prior had felt wasn't unlike the mirror to the way he had felt during that phone call-bewildered, guilty, frustrated, muddlel minded, and he almost loathed how natural it felt to go to that ripping open of meaning you inspired out of him; and on the contrast of it, complete and black falling. Loving you and what you inspired out of him felt as it was with being human; so intertwined into his existence, emotions, failings natural way of navigating reality as all did and, physical illnesses and all, that no matter how he tried, he couldn't deny or take away the inevitability.

"We may be an underground service, Bojack, but I'm only going to stay on the line for a few more minutes until I try to start a service with the next customer."

He took a breath for a moment, closing his eyes, keeping his fingertips tapping on the edge of the phone as he tried best to concentrate on the simple act of breathing. He could hear that incessant ringing on the side of his ears that came with panic, pressing and disorienting as much as the shattered memory that teased the edge of his mind was. He rolled his eyes up as he pressed his hand to the side of his face, sending up some sworn and jaded prayer that some force would make it so that he could save himself from having to go through any mishappen storyline ahead that came with his indecision. He knew peace of mind was too much to ask, or to be even and sober with what bringing you in was doing to him- the memories that were stacked on top of each other in the book shelf of his mind that had never left him alone, and never would, of events that had come to pass that were the sentiment of the one he felt could happen with you; a small sliver of chance, and then a breaking of it entirely-but for whatever reason, he couldn't stand fumbling the entire world of a spirituality that he felt with you; an entire new life that came with connection, and the profound grief he felt to turn from it.

There was a part of him that wondered if he could trust you-which was an odd thing for someone like Bojack to wonder, who had long since fallen into a cheap but accepting existence that he would suffer because of his lack of trusting in himself for anything; but the world was as it was, and Bojack had been permanent into his reaction to it for reasons that made too much sense daily for him to turn from, no matter how miserable it became.

But he had considered the distrust from time to time, turning his naked body over in the sheets as his trouble tormented him, troubled and slightly crossed eyes from alcohol consumption easing into his expression as he had me your face, then turning back down onto his pillow again away from you until his troubled eyes had taken to starting at the ceiling, chubby shoulders turned inward. Several nights he had woken you up with a shaking hand as he had complained he couldn't sleep-you had been the first, only, and no doubt last partner that had met the complaint with a kiss and a closer pressing of your body against his own, weakened and as needing rest as you were. It was those rare qualities, amongst other patterns of pain that he had far since grown tired of feeling, that made him hiding and fearful where he had previously promised himself he wouldn't again. But when your eyes had woken at his request, and your body curled into his embrace, he had felt a certain richness between the both of you were there had previously been nothing but cheap stagance with the majority of the woman he knew; and he had rested his chin on top of your head, savoring the emotion.

You would leave him. That was the first narrative that dressed his questions.

Or you could accept him- maybe you would be ok with hooking up with a drug addict, to take yourself into him for something that was more than shelter. The richness and entirely different and vast perspective and attitude that came along with the suffering you had experienced, far more than most, had left you with a purity in your eyes and the way you talked to him that had a profound sweetness and selflessness to it; as if something profound that everyone craved had been acquired from your deep and vast suffering-and he wondered if he could be entailed to it.

Fucking idiot.

Even just the sentence sounded absurd.

You weren't supposed to be with him at the museum.. Initially, he had meant to go alone. But the night before had been long and trying, and the glimpses he had caught of himself in the mirror had been a little too disturbing for his comfort when he saw just how truly ugly and lifeless, black and puffed his face was.

Within a few shots that hadn't even remembered taking, he eased his plush body beside you in bed where you were curled up, enjoying your comfort while you could-and mere seconds later you were underneath him, his body uncertain and movements smooth enough along with the low raspy undertaking of his voice as he eased himself beside you, and by the time conversation had been over, you had agreed to come with him to the event. A sloppy and as drunken from Bojack's end the conversation had been, some details not being fully realized, he had rested his cheek on top of your forehead, arms around you body, and with that had the both of you fallen into a muddled contentment until his words woke you in the morning. Whether you carried some truth inside of you that inherently carried you and preserved or held some adaptive truth to you regardless of circumstance, or if you were coming alive if only from the fact that Bojack was helping you into a factual helpful circumstance and that there was nothing about you special about how you coped, or if there was, Bojack didn't know; but what he felt gave him no choice anyway.

One thing that he recognized-he was definitely being punished for the fact that he was finally acting out from the same thing that he had been trying so hard to heal from; whatever "it" was, something so horrible and ongoing that it had long since surpassed understandable terms and was now under a vague umbrella of "it'.. The same that had caused him to have little to no one, the very keys to the technical wires that had been hooked up to where his heart had stopped beating when loneliness when from 'wanted' to a gradual 'pain' and then an entirely and resounding sick torment- and all just because he hadn't been able to say no to destruction.

Just as he wasn't able to now-neither to his temptation, or to the affection of his addiction to feeling any given warm body between his legs without the weight of emotional meaning. He had had half a mind to kick you out before he left this morining-but something had stayed his tongue when he realized it wasn't worth the strange ache he felt at the idea.

"Inward we go," he said as he pressed his hand against the small of you back, the memory turning to irrelevance as he kept his hand by you, offering you that soft enlightened smile and a raise of his lip as your softened eyes turned to meet his. There was something impossibly sweet and pure in his eyes, and he could tell you picked up on it; your own eyes wretched into a purity that only came from suffering."House guest first."

You offered him a glint of emotion as you walked your way inside. "I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to carry that title."

He felt a guilt flash through him, but he gave a soft rasp of acknowledgement as his worried eyes turned and he followed you to where you were making your way through the entrance of the large museum door, a slight tender wonder on the edge of your features as he watched the soft hint of your expression while some of the lights eased across your face, the modest but pretty fitting dress easing around your hips falling back as you walked your way inside. You had an almost childlike appreciation about you as you made your way inward, simple and speaking of a small light of progression after a long black of trauma that hardly seemed like an end in sight that was, ironically, part of the process of getting stronger; and he saw it in the delicate curve of your expression, in the wide wonder of your eyes and the trail of your current kept hair-one where the strands were currently more in place than their disheveled erratic misplacing that he found endearing because, for a few winks of a moment, you had allowed him to trail his fingers through your hair as the day went on while you prepared in the morning; a surprisingly natural action he had found himself taking with you.

Bojack gave a somber, soft breath he made his way through the large marble archway that made up several intense carvings of animals and of the statues of people while he began to rush behind you while he followed you inside, the height standing several feet high from the floor and up to the ceiling, as he shouldered his way inside, giving the occasional small rasp and mutter of 'excuse me' to the crowd, all rich elites, as he shoved his way over the bodies and inside, following you as he pressed his hand against the side of his chubby wrists while he took a breath. He padded his fingers against the cigarettes that were left in his pocket, trying to disway the lack of grounding the surreality of his panic was making him feel in that moment-as well as the general feeling of some incomprehensible worry that was following him that only seemed to be increasing the more he made his way inward. He came behind you, fingers trailing on his wrist, and teeth poked as your head turned over your shoulder while you watched his wide eyed melancholy.

"Are you going to be ok?" Bojack's hand indicated to you in a small gesture. Your eyes trailed down at his hand, and then a small raise of the edge of your lip as you met his quesitoing ones. He tried to take the grounding reassurance as much as he was able, lowered eyes lowered and expression furrowing as he turned and watched where there were several tall and blue peacock men that were talking to one another with shrill gossip, all of them sporting a camera in their hands, clunky and large and old as they talked to one another erratically, Bojack's annoyance increasing as he watched them shove through the crowd.

"Think fast if some dorky looking birds start following you." He placed his hand by his mouth while he gazed at you in the attempt of a playful disposition. "Emphasis on the dorky, complimented by the clunky cameras they're probably all carrying around because for some reason that makes them think they'll get a good shot." His lowered, exasperated eyes turned to the peacock men, tall and their language large and exuberant, as they tripped over their feet and continued to talk through te crowd of the dressed people. "They're the ones who'll put any possible flaw they can find of you on a cover. And if you don't have any, they'll find one."

A small, emotionally intelligent smile to trace your lips as the sweetness of your expression followed the birds; Bojack knew then that his observation was correct, and there was a natural wisdom that came alone with how you had suffered in contrast to indulgence; something almost ethereal as it was separate from the world, and he found more than anything he wanted to be apart of it, melancholic, suffering and as strange as it was.

"Whatever gets the flow going for them, right?"

He let out a disgruntled hum, not being shy about executing his exasperated bitterness towards them. "Yeah. That's one way to put it. You got it."

The entrance was looking as grandiose as he remembered it did in his foggy pathetic drug induced memory of the place-he knew for a fact he had neer visited it sober. The old mahogany wood looked as if it had been torn straight out of the middle part of a colonial section of a mansion. There were heavy carvings on the wall that were sculpted of several different smaller women, who's bodies were twisted into a seductive curve, pouts on the edge of their faces as their heads were turned to the lift, right, side, and upward. Their eyes, sculptured to unforeseeable weakness against the sockets of their sockets, were sculpted and carved gently into the sculpted clay of which they were made, serenity on their expressions. Some were wrought or scowled in what seemed like complete despair that dressed their features, others seeming passed out, some a pleasant nature on their faces; though all seemed troubled.

He lowered his sunglasses, currently sat between his ears and offering a more youthful but still old and troubled look, with the attempt of hiding the dim wear of features of his wrinkles and that sickly, almost too worn look, as if a hand had come and had thrusted his expression down into a grimacing demand as his expression was lowered, lightly over his ears further as he looked up at them, meeting them as if it was with some invisible challenge. His subconscious guilt brought on an increased ringing in his ear, seeming to jam and echo into his every sense for a moment.

When you cleared your throat, he jumped out of vague fog of his mind.

"Oh-uh-" His wincing tentative eyes turned to you as he tried to dispel the fog that came from the heaviness of his own mind. "Yeah?"

"Are you ok?"

"Yeah." His eyebrows furrowed. "Why?"

Your head tilted as you looked over his coat that he had slung around his shoulders; your hand reached out to where he kept his cigarettes, and, with the jaded edge of panic and shame it made him feel, the card he had brought that he needed to convince the woman to give him the drugs.

He stumbled away from you as his arm slipped out of yours for a moment. When he collected himself, he looked at you with a jaded breath.

"Jesus Christ, what is your problem?"

Your eyes searched his with an alien of rich concern he knew all too well from the past week, rare as it was and coming only from you-when he was distinctly becoming into another surreal world of his own insecurity that was one that most couldn't reach, but you certainly recognized it. There was a richness in him, troubled as it was-and the best and worst thing was that you saw it.

"Just wanted to ask why you were wearing those inside."

Boajck blinked. "What?"

You indicated towards the glasses. "Those? Inside? I know Hollywoods is full of eccentricities, but the place is already dim." An almost motherly smirk, warm laugh, gentle humor. "I don't think you'll need them."

His hands gripped for the glasses, pattering the side of where the stood on his head. He was only half in his body, which was clearly executed by the trembling of his hands and general shaky disposition, the absence of his emotion; one of which you knew all too well, and he could feel how you read him; the greatest comfort and most terrifying thing he had comes to terms with.

"What? No-I just-".

While he tried to collect himself from his foggy episode of disorientation, he scrambled in his mind anything he could tell you to wipe that edge of inquiry on your face. Even now, he didn't quite feel safe with you; he knew that any hope for himself to a full understood truth with anyone and for it not to implode over time was rendered impossible. The excuses and stories began to pour out to a frantic speed, the same way they always did when he knew he was in company of anyone.

"God, well, it's just-it's a grounding technique. You know, keeps the paps off my back and shit. You've seen how insufferable those assholes can be. Especially when it comes to taking any photos where there's the suspicion the guy is one drugs and-other dumb gossip stuff like that."

"Are you?"

"No!" Bojack's voice was edged into something a little too defensive, ears flown back as his eyes widened, and he tried to collect himself when he saw your taken aback reaction. He sighed as his hands trembled beside his glasses as he began to snatch them off. "I just wanted to make it less likely that any bullshit would happen tonight, ok? For your own sake. I wanted to try and make things easier for you. Do something nice for you."

He cleared his throat when he looked over at you as your eyes turned down; whether it was in shame or thought, he couldn't tell, but he felt that black cover over him as it was when in the middle of living a story rather than just thinking about a story; the constant devastating challenge of being in the middle of it and not knowing if things would turn out alright. His dim eyes lowered as he looked you over with that dry emotion on his eyes as he took in the originality only you held; vast emotion and tragedy and joy that only come from you, and he felt an entire world opening up in front of him just as he was taking you in; an for the frist time did Bojack have at least a vague sense of what it felt like to have a soul; something so rich inside of what you inspired out of him, a vast and turning perspective of such an inner wordless spiritual wold that the cheapness of what people concerned themselves with fell into an entire nonexistence in the wake of the richness of the vast spiritual expanse of which you opened to him; and for a moment he couldn't believe the cheap nature of people who must have been so cheap themselves to concern themselves with the impossibly superficial and soulless activities that people did-and a complete detachment from himself that for all his life, he had been one of the pinnacles of them.

He gave a rasped, somber breath as he adjusted the shades that rested on his snout, taking them off as his heavy eyelids turned down while he rubbed them with his hands.

"It's just nice to keep a low profile." He adjusted his air as he waved his hand dismissively, as if it would lessen the bullshit excuse. "Not something someone of you…status would understand." A timid apology grazed his eyes, but he continued. "Kind of just need to accept it instead of questioning it. Though I'm not surprised by your normal people culture questions."

"You don't need to try to deflect."

His eyes became more disquinted as he heard the soft invitation of that entire world from the warmth you inspired out of him.

'I'm just trying to do the best thing I can for you for the time being, ok? As much as I-" He fingertips played with his hands as he turned his eyes down in trouble. "-Have the time to. Before things fall apart." His pure eyes turned as he looked you over, indicating to you lightly. "Can I try that for now? Please."

There was a softness of a trembling to his voice, as it was with someone with a pure and troubled question of heart, and as your eyes met his again, he had never felt more like an individual with genuine purpose of something only related to him and yourself, rather than an extension of numbers and trends. It was exhausting, disorienting; and something so rich and separate from the world that a life around you was all he ever craved.

"Do you want to come stay by me?" Your head tilted up now fully, eased up with a bit more confidence, and Bojack's smile raised further into sweetness of a soft reassurance as he met your eyes. He looked over through the crowd of the dressed and rich, all occupied with their partners and self endowed loud talk, as he shouldered his way through the crowd and eased his hand beside your arms, offering you that impossibly pure expression of a wretched bewilderment while a curt nod dressed his expression.

'Thank you. This will be easier for the both of us if we just take it a step at a time and accept it." His soft voice was jaded by the shoving of a man as he eased his loud and cackled voice beside Bojack while he shoved him to the side, Bojack raising up his arm as he shot him a glare, then adjusted as he laced one had on your back, the other on your hip. "Just stay by me and try to ignore the noise and whatever else comes up and I'm sure the time will pass by fine."

He was staring at one of the woman sculptures that had now become exceptionally more interesting to focus on instead of your unintentionally but nonetheless still triggering gaze. Something about it seemed demeaning, not because you required anything of him, but because you didn't-which somehow served to make him feel even more drawn and pulled into.

His ears jointed upward slightly as he felt the way your arms found the side of his body. He cleared his throat, his natural tendency towards being timid in regards to your intimacy beginning to clear as he looked down at you, eyes easing up as he looked you over.

"Oh-uh-" He squirmed slightly under your arms, trying to understand how his insecurity and wall of fight mixed in with your clear institution of intimacy. After a moment of tension of hesitance, he allowed himself to ease into your arms.

"So the sunglasses isn't for anything I should be worried about?"

"What?" Bojack chuckled as he rasied his eyes up in amusement.. "No. All famous people do stuff like this sometimes." There was a newfound sense of apology to his tone as he spoke his next words, treading them lightly."Totally weird, I know."

The irreplaceable tender smile that grazed your lip didn't leave you; he found an odd sense of comfort to it, though he far from understood it. "Not any more or less severe than anything else I've ever seen you done." Your fingers readjusted further by his hip. "And you wouldn't imagine the things I've done just to survive, anyway. I just wanted to make sure you were alright."

His gave a slight breath from his lips as he nodded, teeth poking boyishly. "Nice to know I've made it on the normalized weird scale, then."

"I've met you on the same side of that," you reminded him. "Being out with you, and all. I know it's not easy to fall into what everyone else is doing-I know it's hard to shake the habits of superficlaity and the fast paced time we live in. But I know you feel this slow, focused rhythm between us. I know you must be aware that it's all we crave." Your hands squeezed his love handles; he felt something inside of him sweep over with a feeling of something beyond just belonging or attraction. His ears lowered further, aged and worn eyes turned down, heavy and considerate.

Your hands eased up on his arms with a soft, gentle imitation of a caress, your eyes red on the edges, entire worlds of unfathomable emotion discretion in them. You continued to walk through the rude shouldering and busy area, Bojack's eyes flicked up as he kept his protection of you with him, arms pressed beside your hip, teeth poked as he helped you through the crowd.

"Easy. Please." His voice was husked through his lust laden voice-but his eyes also small, discerned, worried. "We don't need to give birdbrains more reasons to stalk me." As he felt his worry and both richness increase, he was starting to wonder if he would make it through to the entrance-or to his original goal at all.