#also? unsure if this makes sense........................... i wont proofread.

[reversecreek]

That morning, Lana dreamt that her collar bones were window sills littered with the ash of spent cigarettes, that her head was just a shut window with the curtains firmly drawn. Whenever Elton whittled to the end of one, sucking with the fervour of a vampire who’d spent sixteen hundred years confined to an underground crypt, he lit up another, tapped his dozenth dainty clump to flutter and perch on bone. It tickled. Itched. Sometimes wings stirred from the mounds, antennae that twitched and trembled, receptacles that documented every freckle. She’d woken to find the burnt nub of a joint inexplicably lodged inside of her belly button, space besides her empty. A disoriented blink and a slow sit saw her flicking it off into Elton’s bedding like the world’s least maternal kangaroo. Things had been interesting since blowing off Jude, to put it delicately. She’d always been told she had a knack for it, stumbling into these situations. Everyone said it that way. Like she was never tying her laces, so how could she expect not to fall face first and split her lip on the concrete? Lana never knew what to say when it was laid out like that, gutted and splayed on the surgical table, her bloody heart shuddering like a beached salmon inside their fist. There wasn’t quite a way to put it into words, the fact that she’d rather it was a bear with a dripping muzzle that was holding it, her, eager to bite out chunks -- that the pieces of her in someone’s teeth felt strangely nostalgic, sometimes, like sleeping in her childhood bedroom, Caleb like before, Tommy still alive, off somewhere playing with their walkies. 

It’d stuck with her, this dream, all the way past sunset, perched like a gargoyle up in the steeples of her kaleidoscopic, stained glass brain, and it was still there, lurking, as she slipped into Elton’s bedroom, whole house jittering like a nervous knee with bass. After party for his band’s latest show. It wasn’t actually his house, one of his friend’s, but him and Lana had been designated one of the guests. Still, Elton’s bedroom. Lana recognised that the moment he told her never to touch his guitar, designated her things into a shoved left corner. Delicately wavering fingers a breath above its strings, Lana knelt in the empty room nursing a Solo cup of dark rum, daring the particles in the air to magnetise and repel her hand. She traced their lengths without touching, pupils attentively fat, slight smile niggling like a butterfly trapped beneath a glass. She’d just about managed a lamb’s bleat of a stroke, tender as anything, a rule so deliciously broken, when the door swung open, prompting her so suddenly onto her feet that it had her cup sloshing all over. “I’m innoce--” her excuse had already cut short when she realised who it was, not Elton at all, or even another one of his idiot friends -- no, Jude, instead, Jude who she’d spent two weeks fucking and then promptly evaporated into thin air without so much as a “be right back”. Not only that, but he had a leech suckling all of the blood from his lips, still attached and rifling through his hair with grabby fists like she was canvassing his scalp for dandruff, eager to chomp up any potential flake. Hungry, mad with it. Carnivorous, almost. 

Letting out a little laugh, the canned kind from a cancelled nineties sitcom, Lana dipped a smile down at her shoes, focused on chasing a wobbly stripe up the spill on her thigh. “So this is, like, kinda cool,” she made her presence apparent, airy as a helium balloon, floating up to tangle in the branches of a tall tree, a violence of red against all that living green. Why was Jude here? Her brain kept shaking and presenting a different answer like a broken magic eight ball. Cannot predict now. Outlook not so good. “Is this my porn director moment? Ugh, I wish I’d worn a stick on ‘tache. Okay, lemme, like, get in role.” Sucking the damp she’d collected with each sluggish swipe of a finger, Lana unknowingly left a longer pause than intended, eyes flitting between Jude and his company at an 8:2 ratio. “Can you freak things up a bit and tongue his ear like it’s the, um -- the honeycomb umbrella from Squid Game? Like, just, lalala,” she imitated going to town in the ring of her thumb and finger, quickly dropping her hand to accidentally land with a slap against wet thigh. There was a snag in her red fishnet like someone had clawed it there, torn in a bid to seek her closer. She absently fingered the frays. “I’m just saying, ‘cause you seem nice, and everything, but it’s kinda giving boring.” Barely a beat for any awkwardness to form, oblivious to the fact it inevitably already had, Lana outstretched her cup in a tilted cheers. “I’ll -- oh, it’s -- whoa, moist,” she couldn’t help but quote Jennifer Coolidge about her cookie, grin plumping her cheeks to that of a cherub then faltering. “Um, sorry -- I’ll just...” trailed off, shakily ditching her full cup on the side as she knead her lips once. “Yeah, sorry. Eat ass, I’m gonna go hydrate.” Flashing another smile worthy of a politician’s billboard, so toothy a dentist ought to be charged a standard check-up rate, Lana pushed past without another word and slipped hurriedly into the hallway, already feeling along the banister to seek another drink. @drugstoreglitter​

#lana | jude #no idea. why this is so long honestly. #also? unsure if this makes sense........................... i wont proofread.