Sculpture, Stripped

Participants:

ace_icon.gif

Scene Title Sculpture, Stripped
Synopsis Maybe if I take
One of your mistakes
Into my work of art
I will confirm it's
Suddenly perfect
Date June 12, 2021

Williamsburg


Give me something like your skin

A tremoring sigh leaves Ace as he looks ahead blindly, senses blunted by refills he's presently lost count of. He has precisely the amount of grace to be thankful no one he knows or knows him is present, a fact he judges by occasional glances down the bar. But ultimately, no, this isn't his sort of place, nor the place of nearly anyone who knows him.

Give me something like your eyesight

If he's being honest, he's not entirely sure leaving was the right play. But the thought of what could happen if she'd tried to touch him while his nerves flared like livewires drove him to put that distance there. For both their sakes.

Something you will miss dearly

Ace closes his eyes and rests the chilled glass of whiskey against his forehead as he enjoys the obscurity of the dark corner of an unfamiliar bar. The tension running through his jaw and into his eyes hint at a migraine he's unpleasantly fighting off with every ebb of his thoughts back toward what brings him here.

To carve me alive

How undoing a thing love is, he reflects to himself in silence, bringing down the glass so he can drink from it deeply and afterward consider his reflection in the angled tilt of the side not smudged from resting against his skin. He stares deeply into that glimmer of a reflection, waiting.

Give me something like your skin

And waiting.

Give me something like your eyesight

Before he finally lets out an exhale, no longer holding his breath for something to creep up on him through his own eyes. It's a realization as tiring as it is freeing. A ghostly yet firm hand on his shoulder would scare him straight, certainly, but he's amazed Odessa didn't comment on his emotional tenor in the days following the first time that happened. The universe itself had changed its tilt around him, shocking visions and truth had poured into his eyes, and he'd been left, ultimately, with a message and directive both.

Your ability to hear me

Something that must be remembered. Must be heeded. Which is why that hand on his shoulder could possibly help more than it would hurt, but…

Rock, marble, and ice

The hair on the back of his neck raises as he imagines for just a moment that he sees warmth entering the green-grey of his eyes, and his eyes shut again to drain the rest of his glass save for the ice. He holds onto the glass tightly, absorbing the cool from it with that tight, finger-arched grasp. He must keep the path, for both their sakes.

Tell me now of what stuff you're made

But oh, how his insides writhe in loathing of this threat to their happiness together. Getting ahead of this to keep them both on course will be a difficult task, one time-consuming and carefully-executed. One that, actually, he finds himself struggling to approach in any way that's true to the way he feels and wants to act. How bothersome. Richard Ray isn't in reach in so many ways, if he means to keep Odessa close.

Briefly he considers directing his anger to the other anchor on Odessa's heart that prevents her from rising with him. But he contents himself with the knowledge that particular snake didn't so much as RSVP when invited to their wedding, much less show his face.

Material and all

Ace breathes out, at ease with at least that development. He rolls the ice around the bottom of his glass and merits attention from the bartender, who brings him a fresh drink. It's tipped in silent acknowledgement and thanks.

But still he can't find an answer to the conundrum posed by Odessa's refusal to reject every love but his own.

I wonder if we're built the same

Would that he could burn the desire from her through some way other than fear, he reflects as he looks down over the fresh ice on his glass. Jealousy doesn't become him, and so he won't stoop to it. But going forward, he won't allow her to stray.

Not again.

Or not at all

The again-drained glass is replaced on the bar, bills fanned neatly beneath it. Ace doesn't bother with stumbling his way to the door of the unfamiliar bar. He slips off the back of the stool like a paint smudge on the fabric of reality before escaping the bondage of gravity through blessed intangibility.

He doesn't understand why the house is as quiet as it is when he later phases back through its front door again. It could just be that she's gone to sleep already, and that's why the house is dark and silent. He doesn't understand at first when he sees the paper left behind for him on the dining nook's table.

I'll write you a paragraph

Doesn't understand the first line of what she's left him, once he pieces together its relation to the silence and darkness and emptiness of the home surrounding him.

Ace stands there, whole yet still hollow, shoulders falling as his eyes fail to make complete sense of the perfectly legible note she's left him. Eventually, he turns from it, one foot circling around the other of him to face him toward the couch. He clips his way out of his shoes, shaking loose his left foot from the now-sheared tongue of that shoe so he can stumble forward from it, free of its awkwardly cut-up shape.

To thank you for your soul

"Fuck," leaves him quietly, and then he hits the couch face first, surrendering himself to the plush of the throw pillow and the leather cloud of the cushions.

It's light out again when his eyes open, bleary and squinted. His phone is fished awkwardly from his pocket to check for calls. None, naturally. Nothing from her, at least. He drags his thumb across the screen, barely seeing it.

I'll keep you safe behind my mask

9:13 am
hungover. don't come home.

By the time he realizes he probably should have qualified that with a yet, Ace has already nodded back off into the awkward angle of the pillow jammed under his head.

I'll put us both on

Maybe she'll come home. Maybe she won't. Maybe by then they'll both be willing to pretend everything is right again.

Because they can't lose each other. They can't, not after how far they've come.

Give me something like your skin

Not with how far they have yet to go.


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