(no subject)

[moonshxne]

Happy families are all alike and every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. What a crock of bullshit. He didn't think happiness would befall their odd half-family at some point in the future but each passing day ushered in a new sense of defeat and the half-hope that there would be at least contentment to look forward to dimmed even more. Unhappiness is universal. Not that he was unhappy. Again, just...dimmed. The way he tried to rationalize it was that Temple might as well have been a kid. And sometimes he still saw her as the girl he first met by the university. Maybe it was her unhappiness that was universal.

With the concept of marriage came the ideal of home came the starting of a new family and thus a new branch of that universal unhappiness. Temple's unhappiness, he tried to tell himself, at least.

"You don't have much to say."

Surprisingly, it came out much more brusque than he intended, and in order to make this clear, Gowan released a slow sigh.

"The facade of domesticity goes a long way."

Comments

[clotting]

"Just what? You can say it, you know." She doesn't come to play the concerned wife, the merciful nursing angel to soothe his wounds. She watches him bleed through the white gauze, lip lifting over her teeth just slightly.

He won't say it. They've both already retreated into their gentility. He won't tell her what she already knows.

So she slinks back to get another drink.

"I'm the wife of a man who went to university. It doesn't really matter who I am outside of that, does it."

[moonshxne]

"I was just going to say that you look dislpleased."

A quick, cheap excuse. Gowan felt like a scared boy in that minute. He was a boy dressed as a man, pretending to take on the man's role of husband. He was indeed scarcely 20 years of age.

"Temple," he spoke her name quietly. "Boots. Let me make it up to you."

It was an earlier time, a time when he was almost willing to change.

[clotting]

She uses taking a long drink as a way to buy herself a moment before she says anything. She swallows. It burns all the way down her throat and sits, uneasy and warm, in her stomach, that mouthful of bourbon feeling less liquid than worm-like.

"What are you going to do to make it up to me? Buy me something? I could get my father to do that too." She shrugs, not demanding he rise to any occasion because she can't even think of one.

[moonshxne]

"Of course, your father the judge. Your brothers too, I imagine?" He almost, just almost sneered. He quickly changed expressions just as one eye squinted in distaste.

He stepped closer to her so he was mere inches from her face, sensing in his gut that this was a wrong move. The Gowan Stevenses, young, popular among other young, trendy couples. He had the mannerisms memorized. The right spot of her back to press his hand to when they opened the door, the right amount of time to kiss her when his uncle was visiting. But right now, it was just the two of them.

"I don't know, Temple." He threw his arms up and lowered them again, not stepping back but rubbing his temples. "What do you want me to do? What do you want me to say? How do I make it right for us?"

He knew, within, this was a barely hidden 'let me look like I'm doing the right thing.' Such a sentiment, after all, slumbered at the core of their marriage, a beast just one misstep away from emerging from hibernation.

[clotting]

She cringes back. She can't help it. There's a palimpsest that follows Gowan, the memory of the violence or apathy of every man that came before him, the crime of manhood for which he can never be man enough to apologize on behalf of.

He can never make it right, never rectify that he left her there to the claws of men.

"I want you to pretend we're happy, and I want that to be all that we are. Happy." She takes a step back, playing with her hair out of nerves.

"If we can't be happy, that's not my fault anymore. I'm doing what I can."

[moonshxne]

"And I am too, Boots."

He slumped down on the floor of their kitchen, a decidedly not gentlemanly gesture and he looked up at her. That guilt festered away, corroding his insides. He knew what he had done. And as desperately as he wanted to put some ounce of the blame on Temple, he found that he could not.

"Answer me honestly. Could you ever be happy? In this apartment, in this marriage?"

He desperately wanted a drink.

[clotting]

The true question is whether Temple is capable of happiness at all, if she has not been so damaged as to forget salvation and joy. These are questions separate from her marriage or the home she makes. Questions clutching like limpets to her heart, internal, pointed, traveling with her like a bad cough.

"Of course I could," she says, because how could she commit to the opposite? How could she vow herself to unhappiness?

She heads over to the bourbon again, not unaware of but apathetic to his own desires for intoxication.

[moonshxne]

"Can you put the damned bourbon down? Do cut it with this game of yours. I know what you're doing Temple."

As his words progressed they slipped from sharp vitriol to a tired disillusionment, a strained weariness, almost seamlessly.

"I'm doing what I can, Boots. Can you not do the same?"

He looked up at her again, slowly releasing a sigh.

[clotting]

She pours herself the alcohol, muttering angrily over her shoulder, like a child does when they're being sent to their room. And then she kicks back a mouthful.

"Can't I have a drink in our own home? Or is that yours alone too? It all has to be about you and your needs and you on the deed to this property, is that right?"

She turns and glares at him, eyes betraying the distraction of feeling the alcohol burn down her throat, and then they clear up and measure him like a cat deciding whether or not it'll allow itself to be touched.

"I married you. I'm not publicly embarrassing either of us. I'm doing all I can do too."