“Are you hearing this shit?” he crowed from the kitchen.

She looked up from her laptop and scanned the screen. “He gave asylum to someone from Afghanistan in April who just came and shot two national guards by the white house in November, then tried to blame Biden for it and close American borders,” she called out.

He came back in, collapsed on the couch next to her and handed her the split of champagne he’d learned to keep at the ready whenever she was gonna be passing through. 

“Thanks,” she grinned like a kid and clinked her bottle with the Belgian beer he still couldn’t believe she’d actually gotten him to try and find out he’d liked.

“How does he think he’s going to get away with it, though?” he asked, long arms draped around the rim of the couch like a stole.

“It’s not how he’s gonna~” she murmured between glorious, fizzy chugs that happily threatened to spill all over the oversized gray sweatshirt he still couldn’t believe had arrived sawn off instead of having been hacked to bits by her, “It’s what-” she daintily hiccuped. “Classic draw your fire-”

“What the fuck else could it be then?” he asked, trying not to think about how much time he’d already lost due to the backlogs and scheduling conflicts caused by sycophants stupidly paying attention to the befuddled contradictory commands of the dingus helming the Republic who made Capone ring out across history as on par with Stephen Hawking.

“It’s the National Guard dude from like Georgia or South Carolina that’d been forcibly sent to DC that it came out died there two weeks ago, under cloudy circumstances…that just came out like six hours before this “attack on the White House-” she said breezily.

“Somebody felt guilty about the fact that they’d sat on dude’s body until Thanksgiving Eve’s Eve, knowing his whole family was expecting his ass to be there to carve the turkey. Tailspin. Toss Terrorist attack psyop shit onto the dumpster fire that leak set off to try to-”

“Draw your fire-”he groaned as she hit save on her laptop, tossed it aside, drained the split and popped up to go grab another.

“Eggs-act-lee~” she sang and twirled into the kitchen, bumping her thigh on his oddly placed island counter. She yowled like she’d been shot and careened to the floor. “For fuck’s sake!” she wailed.

He raised an eyebrow and an ear from the couch but not much else. “That counter ain’t never been anywhere else but where you bang into it each and every time-” he called out over his shoulder as she kicked it. “Hitting it back never makes tha bruise any lighter either,” he laughed.

Silence.

The hairs on the back of his neck suddenly stood on end. He leapt up to dart into the kitchen and tripped over his coffee table that she’d always stumbled over within the first half an hour of being back.

“Fuck!” he groaned and limped into the open kitchen to make sure she was okay. A house shoe and sock lay discarded where she should’ve been laying , arms and legs akimbo.

“The Fuck!” he hissed, alarmed and began to creep around the island, only to find her strewn on the floor, deathly silent. The world around her instantly turned into dust.

---

“Hey!! The – Hey!” he yelped. The color drained from the upper half of his body as he crouched down beside her, calling her name, terrified to touch her, but knowing he had to check to make sure she was breathing.

“Oh my God, The- Oh my fucking-” He leaned in to see if he heard a heartbeat and gingerly pressed two fingers behind the ear that was turned up towards the ceiling, in search of a pulse. The world around them spun out of control as he collapsed on her chest, bawling. 

“Wake up! Wake the fuck up!” he yelled. “You can’t fucking leave me like this, you friggin asshole! Get UP! I- oh my God-”

Everything he’d not ever had to say to her but should have anyway roared out of him as he crumpled atop her on the floor. Secrets kept from himself, fears of how he was terrified he’d have been unable to look himself in the eye after if she hadn’t drawled, “Duh- course I know” once revealed.

His life flashed before him without her crazy, loud only with him ass and it was nothing but hell on earth. The TV blared from the other room.

“Breaking News- The President just signed an executive order banning all international travel for American business on foreign land- The illegality of the move is already being immediately challenged in 46 of the 50 United States of-”

His jaw dropped. Then his eyes. Onto the butcher knife he’d left on the cutting board with the lemon with a single wedge cut out of it.

He wasn’t doing it.

Not without her.

He’d stayed around the last time everything had shut down, quietly in cahoots with her, even as she’d officially taken her “sabbatical” from all the incoherent nonsense they’d found instant friendship with one another within.

He’d dragged his big knuckles for too long as it was, with no one to blame but himself. But there was no way in hell she was leaving him in the insane hell his life on earth had flipped to in an instant.

He roughly grabbed the knife, sunk to his knees and raised it to the sky.

---

“Dude!” she drawled from below, “You’re not even gonna call 911? For fuck’s sake man!” she chortled on the tiled kitchen floor, interrupting his harakiri.

He dropped the knife in shock and crumpled down against the stove, completely undone as she casually rolled over and propped her torso up on her elbows.

“I’m…gonna …fucking…kill you-” he seethed as tears careened down his crying, splotchy face.

“Well~it looked…like you were …um…” she glibly kicked the knife away from them both so he wouldn’t be able to stab her if rage moved him to, “about to kill …Yo’Self- at the-”

He lunged at her and pinned her to the floor. “WHY! Why would you even-” he yelled as the full weight of his body slammed into her. “Who- Why would-”

“I wanted to see if you’d come and get another split from the fridge-” she whispered bashfully.

“The fuck is wrong with you?!” he roared.

“For tha bruise on my clumsy thigh-” she grinned.”Since your house attacked me again, and all-“

“You crazy son of a-”

“It hoirts so bad-” she whimpered.

He angrily popped her in it and yanked her up off the floor. She howled as he rammed her atop her mortal enemy within his house, melodramatically threw open the fridge, pulled out the bottle of champagne and popped it in front of her. He angrily raised his brow as he drained it spitefully, daring her to say a word. He sat the empty bottle on the far counter.

“Okay, I deserved that,” she giggled, sticking out her tongue as she looked away. “Umm…” she whispered. “Did you mean all that? That …romantical stuff you said?”

He slammed the refrigerator door so hard the entire earthquake proof house shook and yanked open the freezer. She winced as he wordlessly extracted a bag of frozen edamame he only had on hand knowing she was coming through and roughly slammed it into her upper thigh, exactly where he knew the bruise was gonna try to form.

With his other hand he pulled the full sized bottle of champagne and glared at her. “Jesus, take the wheel,” he growled as her hands fluttered up to brace the beans against her war wound so he could pop the bottle. “When I thought you were dead? Yeah,” he grunted. His voice dropped. “Did you know?”

She leaned over and danced her left hand up his still clenched with overwhelm perfect jaw to his left ear and gingerly pulled his forehead towards hers to lock eyes with. “Duh- course I know,” she muttered. 

---

Froth went everywhere as the bottle popped.

Tension he hadn’t even realized he’d been carrying within him the entire time he’d known her crazy ass lifted up off of him so fast that he became lightheaded and totally forgot to finally kiss her.

“Why you think I punch everything in your life that thinks it’s gonna say something about you enjoying mah company in the mouth?” she grinned toothily. “Why you think I keep showing up here to fight with your badly feng shui’d furniture, maaan! If we’re gonna do this, this fucking island has ta Go!” she yowled.

“My counter doesn’t hate you…”he blush-grinned. “It’s only-” he grinned bashfully, as he dropped all the way back down into himself, “trying to make sure we have matching sets- so you’d know-” 

“Of what? Bruises?! Dude, that’s housal abuse! We’re both too tall for this shit-” she snort laughed, sipped some of the champagne he passed her and slid off the counter in a cascade of laughter.

He collapsed down next to her. He pulled the hem of his shorts up to show he was indeed permanently bruised on the opposite thigh and nestled himself against her, hip to once again bruised hip. He leaned his head on her shoulder as he took a drag from the bottle.

“SO help me God, if you leave me here with that Dingus, I’m coming after you to fureakin-” he groaned and bumped his head back against the cabinets in comical frustration.

“Don’t worry,” she drawled as she pilfered the bottle back and chugged.

“The dead National Guard dude they tried to cover up keeping on ice got a message to his wife before they killed him. The two in critical condition were targeted because they discovered the truth. All of this will be over inna bit-”

“How do you even-” he crowed, then thought about how surgically she dissected the plot of every movie her watched with her within the first five minutes. He shook his head and sipped. “Treason?” 

“Trees, son, for Treason-” she murmured.

“Trees, Son-” he grinned. “For each and every One of-“

“Them, guilty of Treason-”

©AngelBrynner 2025