𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐄𝐒

[saltburntmods]

MISFIRES

a rambunctious duo in salt has stuck their nose where they shouldn't and now you can all reap the rewards! this is a MISFIRES meme. post a header for your character, and receive accidental texts from your local saltburntian guests. nudes, nasties, confessions of a certain persuasion? things you'd otherwise never write or send? they're all on the table. (meme threads aren't game canon, but they're not not game canon either, right)

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cw: eye trauma 🥴

[haggle]

( bright spots crack in her eyes like a lightbulb threatening to blow out, all fizzling and flickering pressure. it's bullshit what they say — how life flashes before your eyes like a movie cut short, cast across the projector of your mind. ani doesn't see the looping film reel of what led her here, highs and lows and the scenes spliced in-between. it's simpler stuff. sunshine kissing her skin. the waft of citrus on a salt-slick breeze. the edge of koby's grin, sweet and just this side of mean. jake's laugh when it's real and earned, lit up with the wattage of a thousand open skies. all the shit she hasn't fully lived. all the shit she won't see. all those sandcastle dreams she's built, all those sandcastle dreams embry wants to crush like a giant on the beach.

it's a sharper pain compared to the twinge in her spine, the narrowing passageway of her windpipe, the digging indents of his thumbs, a physical collar around her throat. how she thinks of his threat as the same. men with leashes, always trying to say sit, stay, beg. behave, anora, and i won't put you down. she never needed proof embry moore doesn't know a single fucking thing about her, but there it is, staring her in the face. like he thinks that pitiful fucking warning will make her back down, tame her, roll belly up for him.

like it won't just make her fight harder — her incentive to keep breathing around a thrashing, wheezing gasp, the bursting squeeze of her lungs, balloons set to pop between her ribs. her toes slip, uselessly, where she's all convulsive jerks against the wall, nails like hooks hitched into his skin. failing to find leverage, hauled up to hard, unforgiving plaster. wasting some reservoir of oxygen just to grit out: )

Big talk coming from a corpse. ( a flash of teeth. she strains harder — not away, but into his hold, a mocking cradle. all choking scorn, using up precious breath to hit where it hurts, an opening he didn't bother to guard: ) Who the fuck could ever love something like you? You think Ash does? Even he knows you're one pathetic, broken —

( an urgent squeeze of her esophagus closes the sentence off, strangled punctuation. provokes her into last-ditch, desperate, animal effort: her hands scramble for his face, wild, uncoordinated talons scraping into the meat of his cheek. a nail snaps. another. the next upward momentum slashes, finally, where she'd hoped: a sideways swipe toward his eye socket, a flip of blind luck. )

[hymen]

[ her words are like a mallet to the softest part of his heart — the heart she thinks is made of stone, the heart she thinks doesn’t exist at all, but she proves that her own theory is a steaming pile of bullshit (just like everything else about her) when she squishes his pulsing organ and bursts it right in his fucking chest. she doesn’t even notice, because no one ever notices the monumental amount of pain that embry spends every waking moment in. how he tries to mask it with snippy remarks and expensive clothes and top shelf gin and the best cocaine america’s war on drugs sweeps off the streets. or maybe she doesn’t notice this time because she can’t fucking breathe, but that doesn’t absolve her or anyone else for not noticing all the other times.

she saves him from crumpling into tears when her two-hundred dollar nails rake across his cheek, fire erupting in his eye. he drops her like he’s been burned, clutching his face with a howl of agony, his vision blanking as he staggers back, now with a far less embarrassing reason for the tears that well down his cheeks. ]

Jesus fuck, Anora, you fucking blinded me. [ he stumbles over the fallen ashtray, snatching it up and hurling it in her direction, his aim going wild. it hits the wall with brutal force, denting the plaster. he wishes it was her goddamn skull. ] What the fuck is wrong with you?

[ he moves his hand away, one eye bloodred, his face wet with tears. his gaze burns, dark and blurry on one side, lurching forward unsteadily with his breath tangled in his throat. ]

He does love me. You sick bitch. You selfish fuck. [ his words are like gravel, even as thorny doubt presses into him. who would love him like this? he circles her, two wounded animals. ] I was there before you. I was the one in his bed. I was the one he was fucking all night. Me. And then you had to come along and push me out, and I had no choice but to stand by and watch. And I still gave you everything you wanted, even when you took everything from me. I had nothing, Anora. You took him from me, and you made me fucking watch. His arms around you in public. Kissing you, holding you. Everything that I can never have, you threw it in my fucking face. You heartless fucking bitch.

[ he pounces again, grabbing for a fistful of her hair. ] Why do you hate me so much? I’ve been nothing but generous to you while you drove the knife in every goddamn day. All I wanted was to be a part of what you had. I can never be married like you. I can’t walk out in the fucking streets with my husband like you. I just wanted to be let in. But you’re so fucking selfish you couldn’t even let me have that. And now you have a goddamn mouthful to say about how I’m pathetic and unlovable? Look in the fucking mirror, Anora. You screwed me. You’re just as shitty as I am. You’re just pretending you deserve better. Now guess how fucking easy it’ll be for me to make one fucking call and your Jakey goes back to prison.

[haggle]

( it would be a good play in a skilled hand, leveraging jake with the confidence of an ace tucked up the sleeve. she can give him that much, credit where credit's due, as cheap and obvious as it is. but embry is embry, and embry is fucking amateur hour — all bluster and bullshit and the balls to celebrate like the win's in the bag, the game of life rigged in favor of privileged, presidential pricks. like anora mikheeva has ever accepted there's a time to fold and walk for good when something vital is on the line.

what's a gambler, if not a desperate dumbass with too much hope, refusing to turn away from a hundred-to-one shot? nothing goes down harder than someone with something to lose.

she invests only a second of a thought into wwjd — what would jake do. flash that 24k grin, probably — the one that dazzles, distracts, doesn't give away a damn thing. makes you feel like you've come to bet against the devil, like he's calculated some triumphant outcome no one else planned for. but ani's not jake. no semblance of a collected poker face, not even a moment spared to pretend she would cut-and-run to save her own ass, she thrashes the blade-tip of an elbow at embry's side with such a sudden upswing of violence it vibrates into her molars.

there's no seeing red. just the rushing current of blood in her ears, the shake of adrenaline down to her fingertips. embry's hands snag at her hair, and ani's neck wrenches with the motion, tendons buckling tight in her neck — stretched like a hot, furious wire. useless instinct, her hand clamps to the flexors of his wrist. )

Boo fucking hoo. You gonna bitch and whine or do something about it, you crybaby — ( a shrill scratch, like savage nails raking into grains of wood. ) — cunt.

( impulse has her ripping forward, at first, against the stinging pinpricks in her scalp, the sensation of a thousand burning needles. the tinsel in her hair waves like tragic party streamers crumpled in his fists. her eyes strain skyward in their sockets, sparing him the pitiable disgust meant for aberrations of nature, for hollow-eyed monsters hiding in pressed suits. )

Say it again. Say his fucking name again. I fucking dare you. Try me, motherfucker. See what happens.

( — drawn from somewhere so deep it sounds more sharp-toothed animal than girl. she doesn't give him the opening, just a taste of follow-through on a threat; ani's skull whips back like a battering ram, biting down on the pained, serrated sound in her mouth when it cracks against bone. sends her vision swimming for a black, blank second. )

[hymen]

[ he’s too drunk to dodge, too far gone to even think to let go. her skull collides into his face with a nauseating crack, the gush of blood immediate as it spills from his broken nose and onto the expensive fabric of his wrinkled shirt. the room spins, bile in his throat, his balance a lost cause when his knees buckle and he goes down, dragging anora with him, her hair wound around his fingers in a hopeless tangle. he falls heavily atop her legs, blood dripping in comical, horror movie splatters across her silky nightie. ]

Fuck. Jesus. [ it’s, frankly, not the worst bender he’s had, but certainly in the top five — on the floor, bleeding, barely mobile. it’s not even the first time he’s broken his nose, but no one would be able to tell because his surgeon is that good. abruptly, he buries his face into her stomach, soft and warm, smearing blood everywhere as he moans. ] You can’t. You can’t —

[ panic floods his senses, shutting down every other thought. he doesn’t give a fuck about jake, or paris, or how much it stings that anora won’t admit to the feelings between them. it doesn’t matter that his nose is broken and he can barely see and if ash finds him like this, he’ll ship him off to rehab. none of that matters. he just dropped the biggest fucking secret of his life, one he’s been protecting since childhood, one he’s killed for, and it’s anora. it’s anora he spilled it to. ]

You can’t. You can’t know.

[ he’s almost hyperventilating now, lifting his bloody, tearstained face, his hand fisting into the ruined fabric of her dress. everyone else who knows — he’s done what needed to be done. an overdose. a tragic fall. a freak accident on the freeway. someone went overboard while yachting and they’d tried everything to revive them. he hadn’t blinked, hadn’t faltered. because it was for ash. and he’d do anything, anything, for ash.

but looking at anora’s face right now, imagining tipping her struggling body out the window, imagining holding her underwater in the tub, imagining having to watch the life drain out of her eyes even though he’d come in here breathing bloody murder… it makes him want to vomit. but ash. ash. ]

Fuck. Fuck! [ he draws in a frustrated breath, ending on a near sob, his head pounding and ears ringing. he doesn’t try to hold anora down, crawling to be closer to her, his bloodshot eyes widening in wild desperation as he tries to cradle her face. ] You can’t know. It’ll ruin us. It’ll ruin Ash. His life will be over, and it’ll be because of me, and what if he — he’ll hate me. I’m always fucking everything up, but — I love him, Anora, I love him, and I don’t want to hurt you but I can’t let you ruin him. He’s my whole life. Please. Please. I’ll do anything you want. Please don’t make me hurt you. I can’t do it. I can’t just — I can’t treat you like everyone else.

[haggle]

( amateur hour: it's only now, panting and blotchy-faced from exertion, she realizes he's called forfeit. dealt her the missing card she needed for a royal flush, staring face-up at her: embry, ash. call it extortion, blackmail, whatever the fuck — ani just calls it jackpot. the right price to buy her freedom. the ticket to a clean getaway from the natural disaster that is embry moore's concept of love and consideration and generosity. realization skitters behind her eyes, overlapping the bright, burning match of hatred in her pupils.

he's everything she said he was. broken, pathetic — crawling to her like a vulture who's decided he wants mercy now that it's his own death he's circling, like he wasn't picking apart every entrail of insecurity that lives inside of her just seconds ago. setting her thumbs right to the beating beast of his carotid isn't satisfying, too much like putting down a sick animal who's given up the fight — much as she wants to bear down harder, split her knuckles open on his pearly, polished, public office teeth. make his outward face match his rotten insides.

her empty laugh grinds like hollow glass, because — )

God. You're perfect for each other. Go rot in hell together, you fucking monsters.

( ani doesn't have to do the heavy lifting for them — one day, they'll eat each other alive. two starved cannibals with bottomless hunger, a line of bodies stacked behind them. it's not ani acting like she deserves better; it's embry acting like he doesn't already have exactly what he deserves, his brother's first and loyal victim, too ruined to recognize it.

rearranging her grip, she latches onto the hinge of his jaw. unflinching through the bile churning in her throat, the sweet-sick smell of copper, the splatter of blood seeping wet heat into her nightgown. firm pressure wrenches his head down to the crime scene he's made of her body, forcing his eyes to investigate every violent detail. every line crossed. )

You did this. Take a good look, asshole. You still think you're better than me? You still think you're good for anything? Yeah right.

( don't make me hurt you. her fault in his twisted brain, even now. a flare of her nostrils, bullish. embry's hands palm clammy skin, slick-sweat beads of perspiration clumping wild strands of hair to one cheek. )

I want what I always wanted. For you to leave me the fuck alone. How many times do I have to tell you?

( sharper-voiced, a stab wound in the same wound, so the message will stick. )

Here's what's gonna happen. Okay? You're gonna go to Ash. You're gonna forget I exist. You come for me or Jake again, you even breathe in our fucking direction, you can kiss Ash's ass goodbye. I took everything from you? Think again, motherfucker. Got it now? Do you fucking understand me?