WARNING.
The post below contains some very triggering content. The first section contains a detailed description of feelings relating to depression, which I wrote at a time when I was feeling very low. Reading it back it’s probably a little strong for Mallos, but I’ve chosen to leave it as it is. The second part contains an implied rape and the after-effects, with some very un-subtle victim blaming. Several different aspects of rape culture are touched on. There are also strong references to alcoholism and sex, as well as some swearing.

Please ensure you are in a good place before reading. If you are not in the right place to read this post but still want to know what happens, I have included a hidden overview of the post. Please highlight the text below to see the overview.

At the start of the post, Mallos is suffering from poor mental health and is using alcohol as a coping mechanism. He is sat on top of the roof of his house in Valencia and is already very drunk. Lorraine appears, sits with him and starts to drink with him. The scene ends with “Mallos couldn’t remember much after that”.

The next scene opens in Lorraine’s bedroom. It’s implied that Mallos and Lorraine have slept together. When Mallos expresses distress over this, as he’s in a committed relationship with Croe, Lorraine is dismissive of his feelings and blames him for cheating. He goes home and spends most of the day avoiding Croe. At the end of the post, Mallos admits to Croe that he got drunk and cheated on her but does not say who with. The post closes on his apology.

I may not always know what's right, but I know I want you here tonight.
The weight of everything Mallos had to do was crushing. He rolled his shoulders forward, elbow against knee, palm against forehead. Crushing was the right word in a frighteningly literal way. Breath was impossible to draw at times, and at others felt like he was gasping for air. Anything high – dreams, ambitions – was well out of reach. The bar had risen on simple tasks which now felt undoable, like remembering to eat or getting dressed. These were yesterday’s clothes. Standing with a dead weight on his shoulders felt like too much most of the time; it was easier just to remain sitting or, better yet, lying down. Constant exertion (what an effort it was, to put on an outer skin and smile at someone) left a sick taste at the back of his mouth.

Eat the frog, break the tasks down into smaller ones. No amount of practical, neurotypical advice helped when Mallos wouldn’t even write a to-do list for fear of even checking everything that needed to be done. He functioned best when he was multi-tasking, dividing his distractible attention between jobs, but if tackling one job was too much then doing many, simultaneously, was out of the question. The problem with doing only one thing was that he couldn’t do it. Even if he was able to summon the willpower to sit down and try at something, he couldn’t concentrate for long enough to make any headway with it. Whoever wrote those motivational books had no appreciation for a brain which functioned slightly differently to the accepted norm.

Paralysed by the inability to do anything, he should have been able to shrug off the need to. It was every ounce Mallos’ character to tell a world he was fed up with to fuck off. Unavailingly, he couldn’t. The same grey haze which made it impossible to do anything also guilted him into caring deeply when nothing was done.

Asking for help wasn’t possible either. The number of people close enough to even consider confiding had dwindled significantly, and of those who remained, meaningful conversation was becoming increasingly difficult. Croe was the only person left who seemed capable of thinning the fog, but it was only ever temporary. Whenever she left, it closed back up. Even when she was around, the topics of conversation felt limited to easier things, or subjects she raised herself. On the rare occasions when Mallos had tried to reach for the harder things, he felt a glass wall close between them.

There were a thousand metaphors to describe these feelings. A black dog following one around. The sensation of drowning while everyone else swam happily above.

Well. If he was going to drown, he was going to drown in fucking alcohol.

Exhaling deeply, he leant back against the chimney pot, frowning at the sunset. Suns… set? There were two of them. The dual orbs blurred together, sending out muddied patterns of pink and gold over the darkening sky. All of the stars looked as though they were shooting whenever he moved his head.

A lack of conscious thought was the blissful state this amount of wine had brought on. Mallos tipped one of the empty bottles over, watching it roll down the roof without care or judgement. Must be nice, to be a rolling bottle, not being judged. Not having to do… things.

The empty wine bottle rolled into the guttering of his small, Valencian home, slotting snugly into the open drain pipe. Maybe it needed a friend. Mallos glanced around at the other two empty bottles, determined that they were too far out of reach, and went for one of the closer, full bottles instead. He was trying to figure out how to uncork it when a light, feminine hand fell on his shoulder, making him jump. The owner of the hand – fortunately also feminine – slid down the chimney next to him, sweeping back her blonde hair in a way which made her face blur. She touched the wine bottle gently and the cork popped of its own accord.

“Thanks, Aura.” Mallos muttered, pushing the cork out of the bottle with his thumb.

“Too tall for Aura, darling.” She smirked. Mallos glanced sideways at her, letting the unfocused features fall into place on Lorraine’s face. She looked funny, for Lorraine. Her hair was long and loose over her shoulders and she had on denim jeans and a blue-chequered shirt, like that time they’d gone to Shyllipa together. He’d preferred that look; it was more real. “If we’re drowning our sorrows, I could use some of that.”

A crystal wine glass appeared on her hand. Mallos took the hint and poured it for her, a little sloppily. She didn’t even flinch when some of the wine spilled over her hand. Rejecting the glass she offered him with a shake of the head (the latter of which was a mistake; it felt like the world was lurching whenever he moved his head), he grasped the bottle by the neck and took a swig while Lorraine sipped from her own glass.

“Not gonna catch up that way.” He remarked, slurring the words together somewhat.

“Don’t taunt a Russian into a drinking contest, darling.” She quirked an eyebrow at him. “I could drink you under the table any day of the week.”

That felt like a challenge. Mallos lifted the bottle again, as if in toast. He didn’t remember much after that.


--

Silk sheets did nothing for a pounding head. If anything, the smooth, airy fabric only amplified the ache, since it was too subtle to provide any sort of mindful distraction. Fortunately, this was where having a brain which couldn’t roll monogamously along a single train of thought came in useful. Having acknowledged the apocalyptic agony of what felt like his skull trying to swell beyond the confines of his skin, Mallos’ half-waking mind leapt to other details: the enveloping memory foam beneath him, the light pricking around the corner of his eyes, the distant sound of tinkling water.

He went to open his eyes and almost immediately closed them again. Ugh, light. If he banned sunlight, would he be the first solar deity to do so?

The world he’d briefly glimpsed beyond the offensively cheerful sunlight took a moment to register, but when it did, it prompted enough confused curiosity to risk another squint. Glossy white floorboards were part-concealed by a large, pale-blue rug with intricate silver patterning. The walls were of the same pale blue colour and adorned with expensive-looking artwork in incredibly ornate frames. He knew this room. It only took a second to place it.

Oh, fuck.

Mallos rolled onto his back, groaning aloud. Light footsteps pattered across the floorboards, muffling into inaudibility as they crossed the rug. Lorraine’s delicate fingers closed over the white gossamer hanging from the four-poster bed, pulling it back slightly. She smiled down at him from a face more natural than he could remember seeing before, free of the confines of make-up. Her golden-blonde hair fell loose over her shoulders, unbrushed and rumpled from the night.

“Good morning,” she purred, sitting down on the bed next to him.

Mallos pushed himself up into a sitting position with some difficulty, gritting his teeth against the assault on his cranium. He ran one hand through his hair while reaching out with the other to accept the glass of water she offered him. There was a very pregnant pause.

“We didn’t…?” He tailed off, his voice hoarse from last night’s over-indulgence. Lorraine raised her eyebrows.

“Of course,” she answered in a tone of light surprise, smoothing down her pale pink silk lingerie. “Do you not remember? How much did you drink last night?”

She was smiling, like this was a mildly amusing joke. Silly you! Getting drunk and cheating on your partner like that! Mallos pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead, feeling her words drop right to the bottom of his stomach. Lorraine waited patiently, watching him with an increasing expression of concern, while he sought words of his own.

“But…” He couldn’t look at her, so he told the white floorboards instead. “I told you before that I didn’t want to.”

Lorraine snorted lightly, managing to make even that ugly noise sound graceful.

“Well, you wanted to last night.”

Had he? It was impossible to argue against the point; he couldn’t remember. Mallos’ stomach twisted and his heart began to pound harder in his chest, but he forced it to quieten. He’d known before that he didn’t want to, and he knew now.

“Lorraine,” he started, “I’m with Croe now, I wouldn’t – ”

“You were practically begging for it. In fact, you initiated.” She overrode him flatly, eyes narrowing and cheeks flushing a little. “What are you suggesting, Mallos? That I forced you? How could I possibly?”

She stared at him, one eyebrow quirked, waiting for a response she already knew wouldn’t be coming. The knot in Mallos’ stomach tightened and his brain froze, unable to counter her arguments.

“Besides,” she added with a more dismissive tone, “it isn’t as if this is new territory for you, is it? You’ve cheated on every relationship you’ve ever had.”

There was some truth in that. Mallos pushed his hands through his hair and gripped it, trying unsuccessfully to think past the red alarm bells ringing in his head. After a moment, Lorraine left to fetch him a coffee.

The next hour or so passed in a haze. Lorraine brought him a strong americano and suggested, in a practical tone, that if he was concerned about the relationship with Croe then there was no need to tell her anything. She reiterated and expanded on a few of her arguments in his silence, her cheeks faintly pink with hurt, as though he’d slapped her. Before he left, Mallos found himself muttering an apology to her for his insinuations.

He teleported directly home and was relieved to find the bedroom empty. Rather than go and find Croe, who would undoubtedly be wondering where he was having not returned home the night before, he took a shower instead. The smell of Lorraine’s perfume was washed away down the drain but he couldn’t shake the feeling of being unclean, somehow. Was that how she felt all the time?

He caught up with Croe after he’d dried off. The conversation was mercifully brief. Mallos remained vague about his whereabouts the previous night, telling her only that he’d gotten drunk and passed out in Valencia, omitting any reference to the Russian goddess. Ángela returned home from dance lessons and interrupted the conversation before it could delve any deeper, insisting on having an archery lesson from her mother. The pair of them went out to the garden to practice. Mallos went inside and took another shower.

Croe was still with Ángela when he emerged. Best to leave them be and not interrupt their fun, probably. He went to his office and locked himself in, unable to bear the helpful faces of any of the staff, and stared unseeingly at the same piece of paper for an hour. You’ve got to tell her, the part of his brain with Aura’s voice told him grimly.

There was no shaking Ángela when he finally plucked up the courage to leave his office and go and find them, so he went down to the garage instead. Half-dismembered vehicle engines weren’t nearly as distracting as usual. He came back up after a while and felt his stomach knot further when he found Croe alone in the living room, Ángela having left to go to her piano lesson. Words wouldn’t come. Mallos pretended he was just passing through and went upstairs instead, gritting his teeth together. Croe went to check on Ned.

Mallos returned to the bedroom and took another shower.

Be a man, the part of his brain with Sperantia’s voice scolded. Hair still damp, he left the bedroom and went in search of Croe again, his heartbeat keeping time to his footsteps. She was downstairs, outside. There were no staff or children around. There would never be a better time.

There would never be a worse thing to say.

There was never an easy way to do this. In fact, if he thought back, Mallos wouldn’t remember ever doing this before. He was never honest about his dishonesty; he’d always just let the truth come out on its own terms in the past.

The bright Spanish sun beat down relentlessly as he stepped out onto the grass, feeling as though he was walking towards his executioner instead of his lover. The distance was short but seemed to take an age to cross.

“I need to talk to you,” he opened, uncharacteristically to-the-point. His voice was a touch hoarse, though whether from last night’s excess or present nerves, it was impossible to say. He inhaled briefly and let the words tumble out, like ripping a band-aid off. “Last night. I did get drunk in Valencia but then I went to bed with – someone else.”

The grass beneath them rustled slightly under a low wind.

“Croe.” His voice was genuinely pained. “I’m sorry.”

Mallos
I've learned enough to know I'm never letting go