PEARL

TWENTY-FOUR

TRACK 24
TRAPPED IN YOUR UNIVERSE
JUICE AND THE SUDS

it's been a hot MINUTE
also i am so sleep deprived so i didn't edit the last half there's probably typos galore but !!! long chapter !!! enjoy !!!

tw: mention of what happened to lily, self-harm, assault

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NATE was red all over, from the rims around his rue-blued eyes to the smears of blood on the sides of his hospital shoes, stained by slipping in Lily Rose's cinematically-staged rivers of rubine.

(Christ.)

Ida knew that she should've been comforting him, because hunched over in one of Highgate's blue and back-hurting hospital chairs by Lily's bedside, Nathan Gold looked like a child who had wandered into the woods in the dimming daylight and couldn't find their way back home, so had resigned themselves to sitting beneath a tree to watch the sun fade away to nothing and wait for the wolves.

A fan of over-the-top imagery may have said that it seemed as if the world had morphed from a rubble-grey ring of pain into a radio for Nate, surrounding him with nothing but white noise, hence why he seemed to be detached from his brown sugar body. If so, then one could've smoothly gone on to say that Ida Bluestone didn't know how (oh, she'll love this one) to change station for him.

In other words, she didn't know what to do with her eyes, and didn't know whether she ought to pick up her own chair, take it over to the other side of the bed and sit beside him, and if so, whether she ought to dig out a carboard cut-out gesture by setting a freckle-spangled hand on his, or put a reprise of Paul Anka on their movie's Spotify soundtrack by setting her head on his shoulder, or –

Well. Do the screamingly obvious and oh-so-scripted and kiss him.

Like a mouth ever made anything better.

The nurses, (un)naturally, had done far more Hollywood-prescribed harm than good to the group, having unprofessionally presumed that Nate was the father of Lily's (well, what was Lily's) baby on the feeble grounds that they'd found her bleeding and bone-white in his arms.

"I wasn't, in case you were wondering," he had joked weakly, when the coldly-questioning women in stereotypically-starched blue had returned to their communal-room magazines and no doubt neglected paperwork, after catching one of the eyes that Ida was currently confused about using.

(Again, she hadn't been wondering, but this time she had replied in roughly those exact same words more of out of still-ebbing-away shock than desire for reaction rolled into a limited lilac distraction.)

Even though said shock and the scarlet stains it had stemmed from (which had burnt the backs of Ida's lovely-lashed eyelids enough to mirror Nate's bandaged hand) was continuing to linger, it was not the cause of her inability to offer him a mole-covered and model-covetededly-skinny shoulder to cry on, and neither was the fact that her fondness for him had yet to fully boxset blossom.

The bottom line was that Ida Bluestone was notoriously – though hardly surprisingly – bad at dealing with people, in all shapes and sizes and should-be positions of affection, as had been made clearer than crystal by her mother's tears in Dr White's office and their lack of silver-blue attention.

Thus dealing with a boy who'd cradled a girl he loved like a sister mid-coat-hanger-abortion was totally out of the unasked question.

"I hope she's not in pain," said boy mumbled, more to the empty air than empty girl he was sharing it with. Said girl shifted in her own grimace-prompting seat in place of answering, fortunately too fixated on Lily for futility to loop the memory of her mother's clutched Kleenex. "Not anymore."