CONTINUED // @halfbrccds​

                        “ THAT’S NEVER WHAT I WANTED, ”  he dips his head, a bitter shame coating his words. He’s not selfish enough to keep a father from his child, even now, something touches within himself that gives birth to sympathy, compassion, the like of which he hasn’t experienced in such a great deal for anyone other than himself for some time now.  “ It’s just that you’re always mentionin’ Sonny this, Sonny that, IT’S A RIGHT FUCKIN DRAG. ”  She’s right, but he does not like the feeling it plants in his stomach, like a dirty hybrid of guilt & carelessness. Does he love her? Would he still even be stuck in this pit if he did? This is the test, for she isn’t mistaken, his list of women stretches on, for most nights he hasn’t the emotional strength to be on his own with his thoughts, but that isn’t to say he shares them with anyone else instead. ( But he prefers Cher’s company to just anyone, right? She’s special to him, though her presence came too late to shake the toxic habits he had already set himself in. )

                        “ Come off it, I’m here now, aren’t I? I’m – I’m makin’ an effort. You’re livin’ in th ’ bloody past  &  all I want t ’ do is – IS FORGET IT, Y ’ KNOW? ”  Thus the curtain comes crashing down, the real source of his HURT, his amplified insecurities, surfacing. John’s death hit him harder than he could have possibly foreseen, for he hadn’t imagined in his wildest fantasies that he might survive his former counterpart. It was like the official amputation of a limb that had long since given into death  &  decay, rotting off the bone  & infesting the rest of his body along with it. He never got closure. And the last words the two had exchanged were enough to haunt what remains of his dreams  &  push himself to the edge, one step closer each  & every night.  And with that, the facade begins to crumble,  &   a shell of a man finds himself breaking down.