What are you doing to me? I thought, watching her break in front of me, watching those tears roll from her eyes and feeling every rip and tear and crash they caused on my steel-toed heartstrings. You’re killin’ me, girl. You’re….no, maybe we’re killing each other. That’s it. Maybe we’re just bad for each other, like poisonous toadstools or something. Maybe I should leave you and save you from me, because all I do is make you cry, and all you do is make me hurt, and it’s ripping us apart and it’s—

--it’s so good to see you again, Jiji, goddamn.

I bristled a little though, when she told me to shut up. Even in this moment, so intimate and whatever, my inner ass-hat found a reason to emerge. “I wouldn’t be sayin’ it if you weren’t crying,” I said a little harshly, a little hiss on my lip, but it was a warm type of harshness, relieved almost….Like, I can’t tell you how it was exactly, because it was a secret type of husky voice just for Jiji and she could understand and that’s enough for me. I hoped she would understand, anyway.

She came at me, pulling me close to her, and my inner asshole arose once again; as her neck sucked me closer to her longer, fuller body, I reached with my own stubby neckline and attempted to pull her to me instead. It was a stupid, immature move of defiance, but it was an excuse to hold her fiercely; to touch her without fear of her recoil, to take her to me because that’s what I desperately wanted to do. Maybe she hated me; okay, I’d accept that. It would be a lifetime of pain and misery and unhappiness and all kinds of crazy pissy moods if Jiji hated me—but I could accept that, because I deserved her hate. She didn’t deserve the kind of treatment I had shown her—no, not Jiji, she didn’t need that, and she honestly didn’t need me. So if she hated me, that was cool.

But now? I let myself be a little selfish. I buried the side of my face in her mane, now so voluminous and thick enough to hide my nose and eye as I breathed in her scent. The scent was still Jiji—mixed with certain hormones, sure, okay, yeah, she’s grown up a little—but still Jiji. It was…aw man, what can I say? It was…pretty much the best thing that had happened to me since I woke up with this absurdly large and awkward body. I had to keep the tears from my own eyes (shut up), because two blubbering idiots in the forest wouldn’t do anyone good.

“….I suck,” I whispered against her, as though speaking into her skin, her fur, her body, speaking into her very essence. “I suck so much and I can’t help it, Ji. Could you handle that?” I closed my eyes; I continued to breathe her in. My head spun, and I guess I was getting a little drunk from her. “Could you handle a fuck-up?”


@[Ranjiri]