A Series of Vignettes around prompts, written around 2021 (Patreon)

OOC: I'm organizing my Reanimated Heart folder, and found this series of vignettes I wrote around the three LIs. Potentially spoilery, all somewhat canonical. Enjoy!

Also I don't know how to make a Read More on Patreon, please help...

1. Something Scrawled || Listen

“Well?”

Vincenzo puts the manuscript down, and smiles that smile that only ever indicated bad tidings.

“It’s a little derivative, don’t you think?”

Crux’s mirrored smile twitches. Nothing ever cracks in his face, but Vincenzo has known him long enough that the entire mood of the room shifts when he’s genuinely upset, and this time, he hit the bullseye.

“That can’t be a serious critique.”

“Why not?”

Crux gestures to the manuscript in exasperation. “Why is it derivative?”

“It’s a bit too Dostoevsky. A bit too Tolstoy. It’s Russian tragedy at the hands of some pseudo-intellectual from Jersey. Honestly, it has as much depth as a teenager’s diary entry. Oh, woe is me! Society is so wicked! Nobody will ever understand me!” Vincenzo presses the back of his hand to his forehead dramatically. “Stick to term papers, baby. You wouldn’t know a good story if it hit you in the head”

Each point of criticism was like a blow to the head. Crux regains his composure, and takes a deep breath.

“Alright, hotshot. How do you suggest I fix it?”

Vincenzo pushes himself off his desk like a cat, and dusts himself off.

“Stop taking yourself so seriously. I know you’re tired of yourself so… make it a little tongue-in-cheek. A little sweetness helps medicine go down easy.” Vincenzo turns to the door, and stops. “And, for God’s sake, stop it with the fucking run-on sentences. You’re not doing a marathon.”

As soon as Vincenzo’s gone, Crux scrambles to scrawl down his notes at the edge of his manuscript. Goddamn it, I hate it when he’s right.

—

2. Rejection || Space

[ Setting: The English Countryside, St. Mary's All Boy's School ]

[ Vincenzo, age 15 ]

Everyone has warned you about him, but you don’t see it.

He’s perfection manifest.

Vincenzo. Even his name, with its sharp v’s and z’s, is exotic and titillating, like running your tongue over jagged edges until you taste a prick of blood. Vincenzo. Vincenzo.

For the longest time, you’ve watched him from afar. His slender waist, long legs, and delicate angelic curls have often been the subject of derision and desire among your peers. It’s just All Boy’s School hormones, they say. They’re holding out for a girl back home, they say. Who is she, then? Vague and nebulous, a concept that’s as limp as lifeless as their cock in their hands. Vincenzo was tactile. You can feel his heat, see the weight of his limbs, and smell the milk and vanilla on his rosy skin. Sexuality was often viewed as a straight line, love then marriage, but you understand now — it’s more like a rabid beast clawing for something to sate it, and leaving a trail of destruction in its waste.

“I hear Vincenzo likes men,” your friend says, out of the blue. You remember the heavy pause that followed. Every insult that followed was half-hearted as you all burned that thought in your mind.

You asked Vincenzo to see you after class. He said, “who are you?” and “this should be good.”

Around five, you see his golden hair peek into view. You notice his smile as he approaches you. When he gets closer, you notice it’s accompanied by the haughty gaze in his eyes. He wags his finger, smacking his lips.

“George, right?”

“Greg.”

“Who cares?” He laughs. “English names all sound frumpy to me. I suppose they have to suit the person, don’t they?”

His exciting edges are starting to feel like knives.

Vincenzo’s smile dissipates. “Hey. What did you want?”

Your heart’s pounding in your chest. Be a man. Just spit it out.

“Would you like to go out with me?” He doesn’t look impressed. You can’t help yourself. You start blurting it all out. “I know it’s unconventional, but I heard you like blokes, and I know I ain’t the smartest or the handsomest or the strongest of the bunch, but I wanna make you happy —”

Vincenzo bursts into cruel, condescending laughter, and you feel shame like you never have before. All your rosy ideals of him burns red in a different way.

“My god, you lot are entitled, aren’t you? I bet you had to work up the courage to admit to yourself that you like men, that I’d… prostate myself at your feet to applaud your courage! Let me tell you something, big guy. Men or women… doesn’t matter. You’ll still look like a thumb, and nobody’s going to want to fuck you because of your inbred English genetics.” He shrugs. “Sorry.”

—

3. A Verdant Place | Distortion

Tw: character suicide, depictions of gore

[ Setting: Tuscany, Italy ]

[ Vincenzo, Age 7 ]

Vincenzo had always thought himself a wild beast. To him, the separation between droll human society and the wild outdoors was palpable. Indoors, it was all drab colors, tight clothes, stiff posture, and even stiffer conversation, no different than any dead-eyed porcelain doll collecting dust behind a glass case. Outside, Vincenzo understood the life pulse of the world around him, like it was a secret cipher no adult could ever hope to comprehend. He ran uninhibited in their verdant fields, cheeks flushed and heart pumping in his ears. He watched little centipedes nip at lush leaves, and rows of ants march into teeny tiny holes like soldiers in formation. He’s crushed them in his diminutive hands too, reveling at how their leathery skins gushed open, their organs squished into mush. He’d play until the sun set, when the dowdy maid yanked him back inside to wash off the dirt and twigs in his hair.

Every afternoon melted into the same dream, so when he heard it — that godawful sound — it pierced so hard through the sound barrier, it woke him up from his reverie. He remembered all the details. A murder of crows cawed, and broke into flight, leaving a shadow over the green field before disappearing into the horizon. The upstairs window shattered in one spot. He thought: someone’s in trouble. He stood over the shattered pieces, peeking at the hole in the window, how it came from the room he was never allowed in. He went back inside. He was never here during the day. All the windows were sealed shut with curtains. The only sources of light were the fading beams of sunshine slipping through the cracks, everything else obscured with familiar, heavy shadows.

His parents’ bedroom was open. His mother on the floor was flat on the ground, covered in a pool of her own blood. He had killed squishy insects, sure, but they were too small and too alien to be consequential unlike the visceral, fibrous pinks and reds that made it to his dinner table. His mother, broken open, was one in the same.

Her blood tasted like pennies.

In his bed that night, he was calm, but he knew something in him had changed, he just couldn’t place what. He just knew that his house wasn’t going to be the same house, and those lush fields outside were never going to be his verdant place.

—

4. A HOME | HOLIDAY

“What does home mean to me…?” Black’s face contorts in that ugly, sour expression he always does when he finds something unbearably stupid. “What kind of question is that?”

“Humor me,” Crux says.

“It’s a building on land that you you sleep in.”

“What about people in houseboats?”

“A… a place you bought and rented, that you can sleep in.”

“Hotels?”

“…For more than a couple nights.”

“I could be fabulously wealthy.”

“Fuck you.” Black rubs his head. “What the fuck does a Philosophy degree do other than give a sarcastic dirtbag the power to become even more annoying, huh? I know what you’re doing, you know.”

Crux laughs. “What am I doing?”

“You don’t care if I get the right answer. You’re just trying to use what I say as some weird psychoanalysis tool so you can get your little bony fingers inside my head. Well,” he huffs. “It’s not going to work.”

A long silence.

“Alright,” Black says, exasperated. “What did you figure out?”

“I figured out that you’re dodging my question. You know what the difference between a home and a house is, but you’re playing it cute, because…”

“Because…?”

“The implications it carries will signify some sort of lack. With you.”

Black nurses his drink, before taking a swig.

“It’s always been humiliating to me, missing out on something so fundamental…” Black shuts his eyes tight. “There’s some things you need to learn when you’re young, or else you’re never going to learn them at all. I never learned a goddamn thing ‘cause my mother was too busy thinking of herself to — to treat me like a child.”

“And now you can only think of everyone else before yourself, huh…” Crux hums. “Do you really think that you can’t learn new things later in life?”

“Not with anything fundamental.”

“Such as…?”

Black furrows his eyebrows. “What makes a house a home.”

Crux smiles, softly. “Humor me still.”

“I imagine… it’s a warm place where you’re surrounded by people that love you.”

Hours pass by.

Empty bottles of beer and vodka litter the floor, some propped up, others rolled to the side. Frost fogs up the windows in the apartment, leaving the city lights muted and obscure. Black’s sleeping body is on Crux’s side, face planted on his shoulder. Crux didn’t want to move an inch. When the clock strikes twelve, Crux’s phone blows up with all sorts of holiday greetings from friends and family. He peeks at Black’s head with a smile.

“Merry Christmas, Black.”