This was never supposed to be nothin' but a little somethin' to do

COLT

She's a runner, she's a lover, always stuck in her ways
Pull her closer, think you know her, now she's turning the page
She gave a warning if it's storming, she'll be gone with the rain

For a moment, the sound of his laughter and the fading memory of a much simpler time thoroughly delights her. A sensation she hasn't had the chance to hold near him in some time, and as fleeting as it is, she captures it as long as she is able. "Spoken like someone who has never been around a rooster," she returns haughtily, both eyes opening above a grin. It's worth noting, the ranch never did keep chickens once she took charge of it.

The name though, Nestor, tugs the temporary ease away, and her smile quiets and then flees entirely. "No one ever knew about him," she whispers, shock daring to creep up her spine although it has no right. He demonstrated exactly what he explicitly told her, but hearing and believing don't always arrive together. She hadn't even felt him when he'd been in there with her, and even the thoughts she tried to push away, he caught those too, that small number resurfacing as more than mere coincidence under Nestor's wings.

She's far too aware of her own thoughts now, each one feeling like a stranger she didn't invite in, begging them to shut the fuck up because someone else is listening. Asking for quiet only inspires the opposite, rebellious in the worst ways for herself. Gods, how loud it must be for him. Her own mind is noise enough to drive her mad; she can't imagine making room for others. How ugly it all must be too, seeing the mess that the mouth usually keeps tidy. There's a drawn-out silence as she withdraws into the depths of her mind, eyes going a little glassy with an inner distance, stiff like she's become aware of bindings that've always been there.

Slowly, she swallows and ventures something back into the space between them. "Can you turn it off?" Buried behind that, how often has it happened? How much have you seen? How many more Nestors have there been? A mound she realizes too late that he'll already know the bodies she dumped into it. "I—" but the apology for thinking strangles itself out, and feeling far more exposed than she expected to, she draws her knees up tighter to her chest, hands abandoning the ground to encircle them, head dropping into the shelter of her body like she could at least guard that still.

When she's in it, she's all in it, ain't no holding her back
When I'm with her, she's a river moving steady and fast
She's afraid of all the ways her heart is broke like glass

I need your hand but I don't want to burn it

"Guilty," Vesper concedes, the smirk already pulling warmer at the corners as he looks at Colt. For a moment, he forgets the distance he’d so carefully hammered into place between them. Affection slips through before he can stop it, easy and familiar in the way it softens his eyes, until the full weight of what he’s just admitted begins to settle over her and reminds him precisely why he’d kept this buried. His smile fades alongside hers, though he doesn’t look away.

The fact that she hasn’t punched him yet seems promising, but Vesper knows better than to mistake shock for forgiveness. She hasn’t reached the ugliest corners of it yet, hasn’t had time to understand how little of herself had ever been private when he was near, and he can feel her thoughts multiplying as the realization spreads. Each attempt to force them quiet only gives them another hard surface to ricochet from, questions colliding with embarrassment and fear until the noise crowds against him from every direction. The corners of his eyes tighten with the effort of holding steady beneath it, an exertion he no longer has any reason to disguise.

"It’s like hearin' another language," he explains, his voice kept low while the peppermint stem turns between his fingers. "If I told you right now to block out everythin' I was sayin', you probably could. But it’d take a hell of a lot of effort, and you’d likely have to block out nearly everythin' else along with it." One shoulder lifts in a small, helpless shrug. It isn’t the answer she wants, and it isn’t one he’s ever particularly liked giving himself. "I can’t hear anythin’ when I’m shifted, though." That offers a boundary, however impractical, but it does nothing for the rest of what’s rising behind her question. Vesper sighs softly and glances toward her over one shoulder, something sad briefly darkening the blue of his eyes before he looks down again. He plucks one of the leaves from the peppermint bark and rolls it between his thumb and forefinger, buying himself another second before he answers what she hasn’t managed to ask aloud.

"A good deal more than I know you’d like." His tongue passes across his teeth as he considers how to explain something that has never sat neatly inside language. There’s no version of it that doesn’t sound like an accusation, even when Colt has done nothing except think in the privacy she had every right to believe was hers. "I know it ain’t fair," he begins, stealing another glance toward her before returning his attention to the leaf. "And I know you didn’t do anythin' wrong." The words pull a faint wince across his face anyway, because fairness has never made hearing something hurt less.

"But I could hear it, loud and clear, every time you beat yourself up for likin' me. For likin' me more than you wanted to, or thought you should. For thinkin' maybe you could love me." He lets out a breath through his nose, his shoulders shifting with an attempt at nonchalance too thin to fool either of them. "Then there were all the doubts. What I was really after, whether any of it meant the same thing to me, all the shit I’d never live up to."

None of it had been unreasonable. That had almost made it worse. Her fears hadn’t been petty things he could dismiss, but old wounds recognizing familiar shapes and warning her not to put her hand near the blade again. Vesper had understood every one of them, and still they’d worked their way beneath his skin, carried there day after day by an ability that offered him no distance from the ugliest possibilities her mind could imagine. "The longer it went on, it didn’t matter that you were tryin' to play it cool and slow. Not when I could hear how often you wanted more from me, right alongside every reason you thought wantin' it—me—was a mistake." He flicks the leaf away, watching it vanish into the grass while the bare stem remains trapped between his fingers.

"It hurts, hearin' that over and over again." His voice has gone quieter, stripped of the dry ease he’d tried to keep around the confession. "But like I said, it wasn’t your fault. You weren’t doin' anythin’ wrong." Vesper finally turns his head enough to look at her properly, though the vulnerability in his expression makes the movement seem almost cautious. "So it felt like the only thing I could do was make you hate me." His jaw tightens around the admission. "Figured if I made it ugly enough, you’d move on. Forget about me. And since I couldn’t tell you the truth, that seemed like the only thing to do." The bitterness that follows twists his mouth, not quite a smile and too exhausted to become anger. "Not that the truth really changes anythin'."

Knowing the reason doesn’t unmake what he did in the Grounds, nor does it turn the invasion into anything gentler. If anything, the truth only gives every wound between them a deeper root. Her fears had been hers to wrestle with, private and passing things that might have withered if left untouched, but Vesper had heard each one as though it had been spoken directly into his ear until they’d begun to fester in him. By the time the rot had settled, he’d convinced himself the only mercy left was to cut everything away.

No I don't deserve it, I don't deserve it