simping for my favourite non-person hours

And I won't hold you back Let your anger rise And we'll fly And we'll fall And we'll burn No one will recall No one will recall

11:00 Time is running out. Tyme is running away. Great doesn't try to stop him; he lays on the sidewalk bitter and abandoned, the humid heat of the summer night prickling his skin. 11:01 He's holding the hourglass in his hand, staring at it. The sand doesn't move - it remains frozen in the confines of its transparent walls. He turns it around. 11:02 Time is at a standstill. Great has a gun pointed to his chest. He grips the hourglass in his pocket tight, but it slips through his fingers and drops on the elevator floor. It stops, and with it everything else - the man wanting him dead doesn't shoot him. Great recognizes the glint in his eyes; it's revenge he's after. The reason comes secondary to whether Great deserves it. He knows he does. 11:03 Time is moving forward. Grains of sand are sliding down the curves of the hourglass. A bullet lodges itself in Great's heart. He wishes he had the words to apologize, to express the regret he feels for the life he's led in his brief, shallow existence but- Time has run out. 11:04

Dome used to own a diary. A plain, black notebook bought with pocket money - Tonkla remembered how eagerly he'd saved up every baht, a smile spreading across his face as he'd held it in his hands for the first time. Tonkla never saw the point. He never had anything in his life worth writing about. He thought the thing lost, buried under everything else they'd left behind. And yet it was there, in his drawer, hidden below condom wrappers and lube boxes and cigarette packs. He'd never read it before. It wasn't his to lay his eyes upon, to claim. He couldn't resist taking a peak now, with its owner dead. Something tangible of his brother, something proving he'd existed. But the pages were blank. Empty. "Phi, don't look!" The voice startled him, but Dome was gone. He was gone. The black cat, ever-present, tilted its head, its wide eyes boring into him. A warning that Tonkla took to heart. He threw the diary in the trash the next morning.

Vegas rarely looks at himself in the mirror. While at the hospital he never took a glimpse of his reflection. He didn't think he'd be able to handle it, the rotten shell of the nothing he had become. There was no need, anyway. Pete was taking care of him, helping him dress and shave, even helped him brush his teeth once when the pain was so intense Vegas almost passed out. Now, their house doesn't have any mirrors. The bathroom has one hidden behind cupboards - no surprises for Vegas to stumble upon at night in his attempt at taking a piss, making a fool of himself as he crawls there, short of breath, his head pounding. Pete knows. Vegas doesn't know when he figured it out, but he sees it on Pete's gaze, on how he looks at him when he puts on clothes like an embarrassed teenager. Because he is embarrassed, of course he is. His skin pale, cold and ruined, nothing like what he saw after what happened at the auction: fire and smoke and a predator ready to pounce.