𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐇 𝐊𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐒
❝ They're the French Kissers,
that's what they do.
They will lure you in
and then they'll kill you
with a kiss. ❞
━ in which the leader of the french kissers
...
❝ I'm sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.❞
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"Don't drift off on me now, eh?" Rose said, struggling to close the door behind her and hold Thomas at the same time. He was wrestling against his eyelids, and they seemed to be winning. "We didn't just walk a fucking marathon for you to black out before you see my place."
Thomas didn't answer. He reached for the tufted sofa and staggered forward, droplets of the darkest blood pouring onto the carpet like a wounded wolf running through the snow. Rose caught him before he fell, muscles burning under his weight, and looked around for the lights.
Her apartment was silent and cold, like it always was. The curtains were dancing in the wind, this slow, dreamlike dance where the pallid gleam of the moon resembled the tatters of a person who'd run away and left his ghost behind. In a way, he had. She could move house, but not hearts.
She hated it there. The lonely nights, the tears on her pillow, his face all over her dreams. But Thomas straightened himself up and took a look around, oblivious to the history sketched on it.
The terraced Georgian apartment got easily lost amongst all the other houses that looked exactly the same, but inside all the furniture was exquisite and velvety, in shades of beige, gold and blue. There wasn't much of Rose in there, except for the family portrait on the fireplace mantel and the rose vines intertwined on the balcony.
"Disappointed?" She asked as his silvery eyes scanned the room. He cleared his throat, voice sounding as battered as the rest of his body.
"Surprised there isn't a French flag 'ere somewhere."
"Wait until you see the Marianne statue I have on my bedroom." Rose chuckled, a sound the house had long ago forgotten. She helped him sit on the couch, biting down on her tongue when her ankle hit a corner in the dark. "Wait here."
She went into the kitchen and returned with ice cubes wrapped in a cloth, but Thomas was no longer there. There was light coming from the bathroom, and she followed it, like a ship towards a dimly lit beacon. Somehow his darkness made her feel less in the dark.
Rose stopped by the threshold, a gasp tumbling from her like the first leaf in an autumnal dusk when she saw him plopped down on the bathtub's edge. She couldn't look at him for more than two seconds before she started feeling the wounds on her own skin. The contusions on his face were beginning to swell, and from the blood that came out of his nose she'd be surprised if it weren't broken. His lips were chapped, his eyes vacant. He looked like he had just gone through war again. Like one of those soldiers Rose hummed lullabies to when they couldn't sleep.
