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[right][img]https://i.imgur.com/9qIY4OK.jpeg[/img][/right][right][sup][color=#d4af37][b]#d4af37[/b][/color][color=2e2c2c]...[/color]|[color=2e2c2c]...[/color][url=https://i.pinimg.com/736x/9d/6c/dd/9d6cddf90421ceb4a4114345d38541ee.jpg][color=9b9b9b][b]outfit[/b][/color][/url][/sup][/right]

[indent][indent] [color=#808080]Elias remained motionless as Nate’s back disappeared into the crowd. The man’s words didn't fade so much as burrow, ringing in his ears like a crack of thunder that had settled deep in his bones.[/color]

[color=#808080][i]An ass to everyone, or just women?[/i][/color]

[color=#808080]The accusation slid in sideways because it didn’t quite fit. He could own plenty of things: his pride getting the best of him, his short fuse, a mouth that sometimes outran his judgment. But cruelty, targeted or casual, simply wasn’t on the list. Hell, half his childhood had been spent bracing a house with two hands and a promise so his mother never had to. He’d stared down catcalls on sidewalks, rewired a junk heater with shaking fingers, and learned the exact temperature of her tea by memory. Was he occasionally too much? Sure. But was he the wrong kind of man? No.[/color]

[color=#808080]So why did it feel like the insult had teeth? [/color]

[color=#808080]He dragged a hand down his face, staring at the space Tapeesa had left behind as if he could reverse-engineer the moment from the outline she’d burned into the air. His mind kept snagging on small, telling details: her palm intercepting his wayward fork earlier that evening, the playful scolding in her voice; the way she’d told him he should come dance, but not that she wanted or expected him to. How was he supposed to know the difference? To hear the nuance Nate swore was there, when to Elias it had sounded like a throwaway line? She had been so direct with him before now, leading him to assume that when she wanted something, she would simply say it.  Like when she’d told him without hesitation that she wouldn’t leave him behind even if she couldn’t fight, or when she pressed him to admit he didn’t want her gone. She never left him guessing then. [/color]

[color=#808080]So…why then? [/color]

[color=#808080]The recall of the exact moment she’d made her “request” caused the misfire with Anissa to come back to him, too, piling onto Elias’s frustration. The stupid “lizard” joke, the polite freeze that had followed. Individually, those moments had seemed minor, somewhat meaningful but not really all that significant. Together, however, they had stacked like kindling without him realizing it, until Tapeesa’s jab on the dance floor about dancing alone for an hour had struck a spark he hadn't managed to smother fast enough.[/color]

[color=#808080]And then he saw her face as his own words landed, the brightness going out of her expression as if he’d cupped a hand over that candle flame.[/color]

[color=#808080]His retort wasn't supposed to be a knife. It was meant to be more like… a border post which said, [/color][color=#808080][i]‘You stung me, too.[/i][/color][color=#808080]’[/color][color=#808080] But spoken out loud, in front of a crowd and a guy with his hand hooked in hers, it had warped into something uglier, he supposed. It made him feel late to the game again, and worse, petty about it.[/color]

[color=#808080]And as much as Elias Trueno hated being late, he hated pettiness even more.[/color]

[color=#808080]He exhaled sharply, his tongue searching the back of his teeth for a bitterness he could chew down. His hands flexed at his sides, and out of instinct, he checked the air the way he always did, listening for a wrongness only he could sense. The nearby bonfire’s heat licked his face, but the memory that rose was a different warmth entirely: a thermos pressed to chapped lips; mittens swallowing his fingers; wind he’d quietly shouldered aside so she could walk without the gale dragging at her hood. Those hours were a pocket universe now, defined by her thumb clicking open a gate, her arm looping through his, her finger tracing the pale spiral on his forearm and calling it “very Zeus-y” with an easy curiosity that hadn't made him cringe.[/color]

[color=#808080]It had been reciprocity, not rescue. He’d offered lift and weather, while she’d offered hands and a place to set his bag down. That was the kind of thing Elias believed in, the simple economy of mutual support. And yet tonight had rewritten that belief in bolder, more brutal strokes with her stepping between him and Nate like he was the one you guarded against.[/color]

[color=#808080]And the phrasing—[/color][i][color=#808080]should[/color][/i][color=#808080]—clanged in his head again. He’d said what he meant: I would’ve joined if you’d asked. He hadn’t wanted to be an obligation. He’d wanted a [/color][i][color=#808080]want[/color][/i][color=#808080].[/color]

[color=#808080]But watching her walk away after he’d finally said it out loud, and in such a clumsy way, felt like confirmation that vulnerability might have a cover fee he simply couldn’t pay.[/color]

[color=#808080]Elias scrubbed his jaw, replaying the scene from the beginning, all the way back to the greenhouse and that wool-soft domesticity he’d pretended not to like. Maybe the mistake was thinking a gate opening with her thumb was a door meant for him. Maybe he’d been a storm in that greenhouse, much like he was everywhere else—nice to look at so long as he stayed behind the glass. Because out here, he would only rattle the panes.[/color]

[color=#d4af37]“What the hell does that even mean?” [/color][color=#808080]he muttered, answering the ghost of Nate’s question and hearing his mother’s voice instead. He didn’t feel angry so much as miscast, shoved into a role he hadn’t auditioned for. He wasn't playing the friend who had dragged himself onto the floor to pay the so-called dancing tax, who had introduced Forest, who had made his own half-ridiculous shuffle just to meet Tapeesa halfway. He wasn't the guy who, yeah, had thoughts about a potential good smoke, but who was still trying to show up without any actual strings attached. No, the part they’d handed him was uglier: the bastard who only arrived to sour her night, who came for pity or healing or some other ulterior agenda.[/color]

[color=#808080]Elias shut his eyes and let the noise of the party fill in the spaces. The accusation still itched, but underneath it was the image of Tapeesa’s shoulders tipping toward someone else. Someone clearly lighter on his feet, who made her laugh without tripping over significance. Asymmetry of grace, his brain supplied, annoyingly clinical the way it could be in social moments when he actually bothered to observe.[/color]

[color=#808080]When he opened his eyes again, Elias found Forest where he’d been the whole time. The bravado that had covered him like a familiar jacket, however, had slipped off somewhere in the last five minutes; what was left was just the cold, held back by the unnatural warmth of divine magic. [/color]

[color=#d4af37]“Sorry about that,” [/color][color=#808080]he said, the words rough. [/color][color=#d4af37]“Didn’t mean to drag you into…whatever that was. Hope I didn’t screw up your night.”[/color][color=#808080] He tried on a smirk that no longer fit. “[/color][color=#d4af37]Nate’s not wrong about one thing. You probably [/color][color=#d4af37][i]should[/i][/color][color=#d4af37] find better company.” [/color][color=#808080]The word stuck in his throat, and he let it because he deserved to feel it catch. He tipped his chin toward the dark beyond the firelight, already shifting his weight like a man who knows how to step off a stage before the lights make him a silhouette.[/color]

[color=#d4af37]“Gonna clear my head. Weather looks friendlier above a hundred feet tonight anyway.”[/color]

[color=#808080]And then he just walked, until the drum of the music fell behind him and the air lost the tang of smoke.[/color]

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[hr]Location: Dancefloor --> Outskirts of Party 
Interactions: Forest([@NoriWasHere])
Mentions: Anissa, Tapeesa, Nate