To Miles 25

I was falling for Hince, because he was the only one who seemed to tell me that there was a place for him, so I figured that it would be for me as well. I had started blaming Miles but it was getting far too messy, I was far too attracted and it was getting destructive. I’d even go to his during the day and I’d start making out with him and he’d undo my shirt. I was enjoying sex with him far too much, how he’d bite, how he tasted, how he had sucked me off and I didn’t care who was fucking who, it seemed to even out and I didn’t care how rough he’d be, it seemed actually sexual and it seemed to yank me into some reality I had not known. We just kept fucking. He’d even mock me afterwards that I won’t have the energy to fuck other men and I had just silenced him by sucking him off again as he’d pull my hair as I’d take as much as I could in. 

When it came to Miles, even while talking to Carlos I felt as if he was in a happier place as I kept getting thrown from side to side and that seemed to bother me, that he was happier and I couldn’t bring to make myself happier, I was even numb with Hince, whose presence I was beginning to enjoy with his collection of Dostoevsky he had bought last time on shore. 

I was slowly descending into misery. 

"You remind me of Miles." Hince says smoking a cigarette, holding the smoke far too long and I feel as if he’s dragging his nails against my chin. I shiver, feeling myself freeze at the mention of Miles’ name. His nails are opening up rivers to match my wounded state, not critical yet a pathway to the blood stream is opened.

“What the fuck?” I give a dark laugh, the one where the cheating lover died. 

“We’re different entirely.” I pause, my voice shaking, he knows he’s hit a string and cut it in two with scissors and I didn’t have time to scream before death, just open my mouth and let myself die in this motion. “Opposites, he would never send people off.”

Hince grins.

"You’re both naive, believing that neither of you would do it. Miles was the previous. Too many things slipped, kept fucking some guy instead of actually doing the job. He’s not the hero you think." Hince bites on his cigarette, looking ahead to the door.

I feel my jaw freeze, now all the blood going down my cheek frozen, all my skin in goosebumps as I imagine Miles and how he would go on his knees, enjoying himself or maybe he had been rough, his face seems to be molded with Hince’s in my head, which is ironic because I am no longer better than he is even in my head, the veil of justice of descending people to jail no longer being just held by myself, the fabric had been held by Kane as well. 

"Sent that guy he was fucking… Jay or something off. Wasn’t doing anything besides fucking him and it was getting too wide spread of them both. Don’t need such a fucker, sure screw around but fucking dating, fuck no and he barely handed any men over. Sent the other fucker off and warned Miles if I catch him fucking someone I swear to fuck he’ll get the fuck off." He stops and still looks into the distance. I feel like I’ve been dunked into ice cold water, but dead so that I just see that it’s supposed to be cold, but it’s nowhere close to being cold, it’s lukewarm and I’m no longer viable above water, so the ice becomes a screen to look at and close my eyes on. I lied. He lied. 

"Didn’t catch him with Casablancas so yeah, playing fair and you don’t seem to be fucking him either." He says coldly and I flinch. "Fucking decided to be celibate or something?"

I recall Miles.

I don’t dare to tell anything to Hince. I don’t dare to say thing aloud. I don’t dare to say how he is oddly still attracted to Miles. I don’t dare to tell him anything, not even on his death bed. And they say you can see when people can die. And it’s ironic that I had read that in Lermantov’s Hero of our Time, which Hince cannot stand. I don’t think that on his death bed, I imagine him lying in the coffin, the fortune-telling wife sitting and I imagine her silhouette all dressed in black and even holding the deck of cards, but because I don’t know what card means what I just don’t see anything, but if I’d remember the card which the dame of Spades tricked the man into, I think she’d have something else. I see her and I wonder if she is death with her deck of tattered cards she had gained years ago and I wonder if I could be able to shuffle them and reveal the fortune I would not be able to comprehend to explain. 

I watch him and I wonder, before I leave if I also look like death and who else will have that face tonight. If tonight would be the death of any of us. 

Just like poison he’s still within me, cursing my thoughts. I think both are poison, the more the day ages the more I feel that Miles is not just killing himself, but in this slow suicide he is bringing me down, as his lover. And the image of him being more ideal doesn’t seem to shatter anytime soon, he is still in my thoughts, he is the one licking the ice blood away, dipping his fingers in, into something deeper than my skin so that I can’t feel him anymore besides the faint taste of his lips which I long so much that I seem to recall the memories so often that they seemed to have been erased and the longing seems to break my spine in two. 

Days pass with Hince taking me by the collar and our endeavors keep continuing all the way closer to winter and Matt keeps writing, his letters inscribed within me, as I keep longing for him, half my body detesting Miles and wishing to see Matt and the other having the opposite and some old neglected thoughts think of Hince and I just think of Julian sometimes. 

I feel like wrecking havoc. Too many men go past me, grabbing me somewhere if I try hard enough I had even fucked one in a gay bar just by asking a few things and recalling his light eyes. My body departing and imagining far too many men who seem to be standing in a line in who would be in my thoughts today and sometimes when I have sex with Hince they all shuffle and for weeks it just becomes Miles, who I fear to avoid and I don’t raise anything, I don’t ask him about Jay, I don’t ask him about anything.

The only thing I do is that he stays away from Julian, as I seem to finally have the courage to wreck havoc indeed. 

And I do. 

The fear of time running fast seems to trigger me and everyone, the fear upon everyone’s lips and Miles’ distance is no longer the one which shreds my skin and lips as I can see my hair growing and I despite myself from being frozen in time. Things seem to be content with Matt at a certain distance and I can only believe in his love towards me. My hair gets longer that Hince pulls it and I insist to stay over at his, chugging the remains of the bottle away.

Like a numb arm from an uncomfortable position that is how my body seems to be folded with anger and desperation. My life seems to be meaningless as my purpose seems to be the reaper of so many men that I don’t care anymore, Hince destroying my entire soul, the pact with the devil done so long ago that I forget that I even had a soul anymore, as the devil keeps making love to me and that frightens me, that scares me as I make love to him back and I think I’d be lying to myself if I’d say that I don’t think of him, that he doesn’t haunt me in the shower that I don’t harshly kiss him as much as he does, that sometimes I wish I were Miles, instead of with Miles, that then I’d have all these men around me. 

I just feel far too skinny, far too tired from the melancholy eating what’s left of me. And Matt’s letter don’t seem to be enough until I reread them, picking up what could be shards of love and longing even if I know that he loves me.

It scares me up to the point that I wish I could burn these genuine letters as the venom of Hince triggers me more than ever. Matt’s love on the table makes me question Miles who avoids me and Hince who is just there. 

Miles seems to descend in my thoughts, the kiss as far away as the shore and I don’t have the guts to ask him anything as he just went on, tiptoeing around my life, making me shiver, trailing his nails on the back of my neck, just leaving trails for me to see rather than feel, as all my insides had bled out and dried up, the bones drenched in long blue sorrow. 

“Love is a wide term.” Hince lights a cigarette, blowing on the newly formed smoke string. “How many people do you love, Turner?”

I shiver as Hince grins and smirks and I look at his teeth as he drags the cigarette, both of us naked in different corners of the bed, the room dunked in a post-coital state which always seems to be whenever we are both in it and he seems to be driving me insane, the devil which brings some odd belief in God within me and I wonder where will this whirlwind take me as I just crawl over to Hince and put my head on his lap watching him from below as he smirks and slowly sticks his index finger in my mouth, getting it deeper and deeper as I smirk, licking it and sucking it lightly. He seems amused, but the question like death is still plastered in his thoughts with his smug grin. Hince lets it slide to reveal another ace pretty much most likely was stuck up his balls. 

"Your world crumbles when you fall in love with a man. Because then you know it won’t be you pulling the rug from under your feet, it’ll be society and God who had created you. There’s that Gogol quote ‘I had given birth to you and I will be the one to kill you.’" I don’t know what’s worse the quote itself or the fact that Hince was quoting Gogol and I couldn’t recall if the novel idea was also given to him by Pushkin or not. I still cringe and Hince grins using that quote.

“You know the novel, right?” 

“It’s shit. Fuck off.”

“Who did you side with?”

“The son who traded sides to be with the Polish woman and turned his back on Ukrainians and killed them for his beloved.”

“Unpopular opinion, Turner.”

“Of course you’d be the father.”

“Yeah, I’d fuck you, son, before killing you.” I raise an eyebrow at him as he grins, stroking my hair. “It’s quite homosexual, just men among men.”

“Like the navy.”

“Pretty much, we all fuck here, Turner. That’s why your always on the loop and always a lover.” He can’t stop amusing himself proudly. He sticks two fingers in my mouth and pretends to have a gun to shoot me. 

“Chekov’s gun?”

“Only I don’t know if the aim is right and if it’s the right person.” He pauses and leans closer to me. “But the gun is on stage, Turner, it will shoot, love.”

Pull the trigger, inject the poison, Hince, but there is so much poison that my blood stop identifying the blood and now the poison carries the oxygen as I pull him closer towards me, anxiety riding all of my loves around in a death carousel and I wonder as the fear of war comes with all cities collapsing and Hitler using far too many aces.

Hince had asked his wife to fortune-tell and he tells me she won’t tell if we all fall or if we don’t for her amusement as war is not a person, war is all of us and revealing such a card is something she shouldn’t do as too many deaths stain it. I had wanted to meet the death in her, to see how she’d do the cards and she seems to be in my thoughts. 

And when I meet Alison, she’s something like I had expected her only with children and the house nowhere close to her lace and black attire and the women who come to her, as I watched her fortune-tell, waving at me to let me stay and how all the plain cards would come out red, how men would come and go in women’s lives and only once a woman had showed up when I had asked her to fortune-tell for her. She had laughed and asked me to fortune-tell for me.

She put the cards out and kept silent for a while.

“Will I die?” Was the question which escaped my lips. 

“I would not tell something bad and you won’t. The death upon your arms is not yours, you’re the one holding it, Alex.” She gave a faint smile. We had all eaten and Alison had said that she was now pregnant and Hince had smiled, reserving his emotions as I saw with a few exchanges with Alison. 

The image of Miles never seems to fade as it seems to be growing stronger, specifically in the Hince’s household where I imagine Hince had taken Miles and had fucked him somewhere away from his wife and children. 

And I wonder how many parallels come in life, how come I’m the parallel and replacer for something so dear as Miles and the more I think the more I will stare at him onboard, wondering who had he kissed if he had kissed anyone at all. 

And I wondered if we are all continues to someone who would Matt be with his letters and thoughts and as I sat eating with the Hince’s I had recalled Matt’s last letter on how he muses of love and it feels like a fragment of his thoughts is the only thing my dear friend and hopefully lover may give me. 

There is a love which threatens you, he had written and I was sure that he had written this scared maybe even on the deck of the ship, letting the wind take over his fingers and mind not wrap around his secrets fully to let them loose as we are not nearby and Matt in general would let me his thoughts but apparently I had always been to blind to see that I was the person who I was in love with.

Alison had asked me who was my interest and without asking she had taken a diamond Jack putting him on one side and me of clubs on the other, tell me to chant some phrases and without questioning we weren’t the ones in the middle of the circle, which was the best outcome and then she asked me if I wanted to be told again.

I didn’t say anything and she just smiled softly to dismantle the telling. 

There is a love which threatens you, Matt had written, it’s not necessarily the person who you love who is holding the gun against your temple before a kiss, but most likely it’s you against yourself pointing at your reflection knowing that it will backfire.

I didn’t think Matt would be the one who would backfire, but yet we weren’t in the middle of the circle and as I headed out with Hince, I wondered, but then Matt surely was the diamond Jack Alison had paired me with and I just couldn’t help but wonder why hadn’t Miles shown up on any cards at all? 

I wanted to be Miles’ parallel even if Hince had already done it for us. 

Only when I was leaving I had noticed a photo near the corridor of Alison with her arms around both Hince and a younger man with a longer fringe and who was laughing, something unusual to see in black and white photos and I had wondered for a while why was Miles here and he seemed to be in his teenage years.

Alison had smiled when I had started staring at the photo.

"That’s my brother, Miles. Jamie influenced him to go to the navy."

And I’m a fool for loving.

And I’m a fool for letting someone who I do not know destroy me.

And I do wonder why does Hince fiddle with me so often that he comes back, our trip to his wife and children over as soon as it had started with both us leaving to the ship. We tried to have slow sex, but it’s never gracious, it’s also clumsy and sweaty, a bit too much pulling or not enough, swears under the breath and Hince had been far too tired. 

“I think when you fall in love, fear takes over you and all the years and days they don’t matter and the time only passes with how the person ages.” Hince says turned away from me, taking the last drags of a cigarette and placing it on the floor, already stubbed out as he hugs himself and I know that if it were us to be in the circle of fortune telling cards, I believe we would’ve changed places. 

“What the fuck happened between you and Miles?” I ask him, praying on his sleepy state but instead he turns around and I see his green eyes focusing on my own, he gives a dark twisted smile far too broken and I’m sure that if the light would be on, I wouldn’t even see a man.

“I could ask you the same thing, Turner.”

“I don’t think I’m the one fully dunked in love with a man who will never love me back.” I mutter.

“I think you are, Turner. You’re the one getting shattered and played with.” He smirks at his broken reflections in my eyes, grabbing me by the chin. Our shards will never put a mirror back together, instead we were carrying a mirror with a big crack but only when the damn thing shattered we see that we had been carrying nothing in the first place and we can no longer see our reflections besides the fact that we are the cards which show up on Miles’ cards which Alison would reveal slowly but because neither of us are fortune tellers we don’t know which cards are present, past or future or if all two are present tense. 

-

I think I have a lot of fortune telling explaining to do here xD I pretty much discovered my old book and cards so I had a go and even learned (I can't remember if I used that one before) a new one xD and I pretty much gave that thing to Alison which I quite enjoy, ok, off to explain the whole thing xD

I can't, I have this odd fucking love for Hince/Al here O_O I don't like them but oddly enough they are together in an odd way and Callie just told me that I'm just in the character (I mean I have been in this story and I don't think I distinguish myself from Al anymore jk jk XD) 

A lot of this was written on my phone in buses actually or as I was walking somewhere, specifically pretty much all conversations between Alex and Hince. 

This chapter has two plot twists the fact that Miles had Alex's job but because I had written it before it's now less shocking to me and the idea just sprung in my head like pretty much everything in To Miles does, as I'm writing on the phone, thinking. I was musing over what was the connection between Hince and Miles and it's not even over yet as it is much deeper. As I said To Miles has a lot of parallels and pretty much every character has a parallel with another, like now one is pretty obvious which is Alex and Miles and it's funny how Miles was seen as the hero and now he and Alex are very alike and Miles is even close to as anti-hero as Alex and in general I like the idea of how his heroness is now demolished and he is a close equal to Alex.

And as usual there are discussion between Alex and Hince on Russian literature. As much as I hate Russian literature Hero of Our Time shall forever be one of my favourite novels and frankly Pechorin is still one of my favourite all time characters ever created. If you ever have the time I will actually say, yeah, check it out, although I've heard that the translation is shit. I enjoy Lermantov in general, so yeah. And the last chapter is about how Pechorin hears that you can see if a man will die and he makes a bet with someone that the man will die, the man avoids something quite dangerous and by the end of the day dies by some foolish avoidable accident, making Pechorin win the bet. 

Also the other short story mentioned is actually the only ever work I've liked of Pushkin, which is called the Dame of Spades and I had read roughly around the same time. I've also seen the opera which is quite good and the story itself is short and rather entertaining. The story seems to fit this chapter with the whole analogy of Alex and Matt having their own cards. In the story it is said that a woman can always win this certain card game where you have to guess the cards and gambler decides to sneak up on her and scares her to death, but she comes to him in his sleep (I hope I'm not muddling up facts) and tells him the cards which will be on tomorrow's game. You have to guess three cards and he doesn't guess the third one which ends up being a dame of spades instead of a seven of clubs I think which the woman had told him. The man eventually goes insane. 

I believe I will address the fact that Alex is polyamorous later on in the story and I already have given him a lot of love interests xD 

Also the author I've been avoiding like the plague, the worst author which has ever existed on this Earth, fucking Gogol, I don't care if you like him, I had to study him and I hate him with my guts and I even had to see movies based on his work. I couldn't avoid that son of a bitch, he had to be used in here since apparently this is where all my knowledge of Russian literature is going to xD 

I hate that quote, I hate Taras Bulba with my guts, it's so fucking bad and the only thing I had enjoyed about it were these few paragraphs when the son flees with his Polish lover. That's it. They attack the Poles for the fuck of it and it's awful and I had to argue and like Alex choose the unpopular opinion and hear people say how right Taras was for killing his son. Ugh. I watched the movie and funnily enough the actor who played the man who fled was played by my favourite Russian actor (I had been fangirling for a while xD) and since we are touching Petrenko xD (I feel so Russianized wow xD) I had seen him live in a theatre performance in a WWII piece about Leningrad and his character heavily influenced Matt in this story and a bit of Jack. In general my favourite movies and theatre plays about WWII are pretty much about pilots in one way or another, so don't worry we've got pilots ahead in the story! (Wow, spoiler, spoiler xD)

Ok, back to Taras Bulba, it's pretty much about how Cossacks get bored and decide to attack the Poles and that's it. I kid you not. And then they lose men and son and they cry over it (you're the ones who got bored and decided to go fight -.-) and the famous quote is "I gave birth to you and I will kill you" (I'm too lazy to fully translate from semi-old Russian) and I've always hated it but in this religious context it was given in the story it kind of makes sense? xD And yeah, in general I like the religious themes in the story and how all of a sudden the relationship with Miles are poisonous as well for now, how everything seems to shift, because in life, everything changes all the time.

Just in case Chekov's gun is a term which means that there is a gun on stage it will shoot at some point in the play. Jack for instance, his character is in my opinion a massive Chekov's gun in the story. (Holy fuck why is this story so deep xD)

Like a good fortune teller, Alison does not tell when bad things will happen, you can predict death but you're never supposed to tell, so yeah, spoiler? 

About the cards. I've pretty much had fortune telling around me at all times coming from a fortune telling family with fortune telling dreams, I guess, it's just something even daily to me? So I'm not sure how much does fortune telling differ from place to place, all of this is not on tarot cards by the way, I was musing if I should, but I use pretty much a) regular deck b) specific deck (this odd thing I bought ages ago which always seem to predict stuff, it's odd, but then fortune telling is an odd thing :) ) so Alison pretty much uses the ones I use and she has a regular playing deck. About the diamond and jack of clubs every person (there's two ways by the way of getting assigned to which Dame or Jack you identify as) I pretty much used hair colour and eye for Alex and the other person. Also the middle of the circle means that fully mutual love and the cards had shown close to that, meaning something stopping them. I've had that come up on my own, it's interesting xD 

And boom, that's pretty much the heavy plot twist which I wanted to end the chapter on but I pretty much felt like continuing and I wrote a bit more. After a lot of musing on Hince and Miles, I finally have their full backstory in my head and I will keep silent on what it reminds me of, I'll just say I love Almodovar a lot and I had compared it to a less poisonous version of one of my favorite works done by him (no, it's not Todo Sobre Mi Madre for once xD) And I quite like the idea of Miles and Alison being siblings :D 

And I think I'll end with the fact that now there is a parallel between Hince and Al regarding Miles which is more than obvious :D

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did and yeah, I pretty much put a lot of thought and backstory in this story and the idea of Alex being at Alison's and Hince's was something I wanted to do for this chapter and I was struggling how to do it and in the end, I was like fuck it and it happened and I enjoyed it :D and yeah, Alison is pretty much very cool here and there's a lot of her ahead and I wonder if anyone picked up on her, tell me if you figured out where is Alison mentioned before xD dun dun dun xD 

The last one, I tried this interesting long fortune telling a while ago and basically you get two present cards but unless you know which card's position means what tense, you're pretty much clueless and so is Alex and Hince in their case, as they don't know where are they in Miles' life. 

I hope you enjoyed it and if you did please tell me so :3 and I'll get inspired to write more :D and I guess if you have any questions regarding the story or anything please feel free to ask or if you have any assumptions on what will happen I'm interested to listen to them :D

Pop me a message anywhere really :3 (Holy fuck long behind the scenes xD)

Hope you enjoyed it and please request if you enjoyed it :3

<3

To Miles 26