PEARL

TWENTY-NINE

TRACK 29
TONGUE TIED
GROUPLOVE

storytime on halloween night i had a dream where i was in pearl universe and trying to set paper on fire with micahs lighter and i was talking to nate and he was sad so i kissed his burnt hands

🚬

NATE had heard Ida word for worrying word, but panic stipulated a pointless exclamation.

"WHAT DID SHE JUST SAY?!" he demanded, an octave too high and his eyes owl-wide, jerking his rain-dripping head back inside the car. Its driver – at whom his worthless shouting had vaguely been aimed – half-turned down the radio and half-turned over his right shoulder to answer him.

"She said she thinks they're being kidnapped."

"I KNOW! I HEARD HER! DRIVE FASTER!" 

"What?"

"I SAID DRIVE FASTER!"

"I know. I heard you. I'm already pushing the limit – "

"PULL OVER THEN!"

"But wouldn't it be better to get a picture of – ?"

"I SAID PULL OVER!"

With a tight sigh not entirely masked by his tyres' screeching and a small yelp-yet-laugh from Lily, the driver did what he was told and swerved onto the dirt outskirts of one of the road's shouldering fields. The Ford had scarcely finished skidding to a halt before Nate was throwing open the door, jumping off of the backseat and sprinting after the other car, which was rapidly disappearing into the pitch-black horizon and moving a Hell of a lot faster than his hospital shoe soles ever could.

That may have been something of an understatement, because no sooner did he come close enough to see the faint gleam of the car's wind mirrors and rain-slicked body and hear the even fainter thrum of music – country? – coming from within, its driver loudly revved up the acceleration and sped utterly out of sight, vanishing into the thick darkness that continued down the winding road for what looked like miles on end and leaving Nathan Gold to do the following consecutively:

Shout, give himself a final pointless push, then double over panting and would-be-cursing at the ground's brand-new smell of burning rubber if not for an attack of his Ida-angering asthma. 

Well clearly, he thought, while wheezing and wincing and digging around his sweater pocket to pull out his inhaler and take a few more puffs than usual, that wasn't going to work.

To deprive the now-distant Miss Bluestone of the luxury of widening her author's plot holes and prodding at their inconsistencies, Nate had a perfect explanation for why running this time had resulted in coughing and a constricting chest, but doing so through the woods with her hand in his hadn't. No, it wasn't because his asthma had been shot down by their TV studio's rose-gun, but because years of living with the condition had taught him roughly how far he could push himself, and he'd chosen to exceed that limit in his frankly laughable venture to chase down a speeding car.

So unfortunately for Ida, knocking their author's depiction of his disease would've been off the table. But it wasn't like that would've stopped her. Surely she would've responded by batting an ever-bored eye or raising both to Heaven and commenting on how asthma was a weak attempt at one-of-a-kind representation – why not give him contact lenses, or severe dyslexia, or synaesthesia, or – ?

Would've. She would've.

Fuck. Fuck.

"Fuck," Nate decided to vocalise, having regained a few threads of breath, blinking helplessly at the sparse array of stars and, spurring Ida's imaginary irritation, combining the cliched rubbing of his eyes red and pushing of his sweater sleeve up to his shoulder to pinch his forearm hard.