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Billy Hargrove, 20

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[medals]

I wouldn’t have asked you to. I just didn’t want to see you - laughing at his stupid jokes. [Not the point, really, and it’s terribly petulant. She’s been good, she thinks, about keeping all her jealousy and insecurities at bay. She’s swallowed them down and put them in a box called hypocritical slut, because a girl with five boyfriends doesn’t really have much of a say about anything. It would be, she thinks, the worst thing in the whole entire world if Petre were to be the reason she opened the box.

Less so if it were Murphy. It stings just a little to hear that there’s no choosing. But that goes in the box too, where it belongs, because deep down she does like Murphy. She cares deeply about Murphy. She misses him.

Her face is so sour. An ugly pinch of her brows, the terrible frown of her mouth, the never-ending tiredness that she can’t seem to stop from permeating off of her. Maybe if she slept better, she’d be a better person. A more rational person. Just a person, even. She feels like a walking time-bomb. ]

I don’t know what that means. [Where does she end? Here? Home?

Her head tilts, bends to rest her cheek in his shoulder. She almost says: but you’re mine. He knows that, though. She hopes. She wants. ]

[otherbitches]

You wouldn't have asked, but it... wouldn't have been okay. It wouldn't have worked. I'm not stupid. He hurt you.

[ Month's ago, it wasn't the sort of thing he would have given a shit about, because before Rubilykskoye, another person's happiness wouldn't have registered to him. Not as something he'd need to concern himself with. Petre's a funny son of a bitch who sucked his dick once. Pretty par the course for making friends in this shithole. Jem's different and Murphy is too. ]

It means this isn't it. It means you're going to be good again.

Don't ask how I know. I just do.

[ They have to. He knows they both want to be. ]

[medals]

I don't know if that's true.

[Is this pessimistic? Maybe. But, it's because, very stubbornly: ] I'm not going to fold. Not about John. I don't think he will either.

[It's exhausting for her. She can only imagine how exhausting it is for Billy. She can imagine how much it must hurt, actually - knows, even, how much it hurts to be stuck between two people who won't see eye to eye. But she won't budge, she's in too deep, she cares too much. ] I'm - I'm sorry.

[otherbitches]

[ He doesn't know John well enough to trust him like Jem trusts him, even after his monster frothed up though him and all over John, a confusing pain point. He hasn't really been privy to that aspect of her life here, that important aspect of her life here. But he doesn't really blame John, not in a personal way, and truthfully it's Danny who causes him more actual hurt on a good day, and he dutifully ignores that. So he dutifully puts John out of mind too. Murphy will come through this strange pained rebirth.

He does believe, though, that this isn't the end of Murphy and Jem. He doesn't accept or reject the apology. ]

Do you want me to talk to him?

[medals]

[She softens at that. The bristling stops, for a moment, and she - she would like that. She would appreciate that. But: ]

Don’t make it weird between you for me.

[otherbitches]

[ The problem is, he doesn't actually know what to say. Because he gets it, he gets why Murphy would push John and his dear family away, but he knows Jem, who he thinks would forgive anything, who believes it was a mistake, and maybe it was.

His hand glides through her hair. He stubbornly doesn't think about the version where they don't get good. ] I'm a big boy. I'm not going to lose either of you.