"Who was that?"

I toss my phone onto Beck's table, case hissing over the lacquered wood. "Vega." I sit with my back to him, trying to split my shoulderblades from where they're hunched up, drawstrings of my heart pulled tight. Tori's voice was wandering and lost, full of pauses and edges. She's confused. She draws her emotions about her like a blanket, lets them coat her until she's sweating and groggy, hair damp. I've safely packed mine away. Better to be cold than smothered.

"What did she want?" It's an innocent question from Beck, where he's sprawled out on his bed, hands behind his messy black hair, button down shirt opened, showing his flat, smooth torso. His skin is almost the colour of Tori's. But he smells like musk and dark curves, where she's floral and melting tones, and I shouldn't be making comparisons.

"She's under the misguided impression that we're friends." My stomach churns sickly, palms sweating. Why are you doing this? But my voice is steady, bored. Singing isn't the only time I control it. I lay back, Beck twisting to accommodate me. My side of the conversation consisted of one word answers, terse and tight, until Tori's long ellipse filled sentences turned to sighs and eventually the sound of a dialtone. She wants to talk about it. Us.

Beck looks at me, dark brows heavy over his eyes. "You should be nicer to her. She's done a lot for you, you know." He pokes me in the stomach teasingly. "It wouldn't kill you to be nice to her." He grins that easy smile I fell in love with, and I twist the tiny smile that threatens to emerge into a pout, looking away from him.

"It might." My tone is petulant, that of a child who begrudgingly admits that maybe broccoli isn't the worst thing ever. There's the child that comes out only when Beck's here, cowering in the maze that only he's found his way to the centre of. But Tori's getting closer every time I see her. Every time she says my name in a voice edged with pleasure, with conflict. A part of me truly believes it might kill me to be nice to her. "I'm nice to you. That's enough."

Beck holds up his hands in protest. "Whoa, whoa. Since when have you been nice to me?"

I raise a studded eyebrow at him, leaning in. "Oh, so you don't think this is nice?" His mouth is cold and minty, his skin warm and hard, and he kisses me with a sureness that I used to find attractive. He knows me, inside and out. His teeth scrape my lip, a dance we've done before. Step left, step right, turn and shuffle. His hands find their perfect places, his mouth traces trails travelled before. His body moves in a rhythm that's neither too slow nor too fast. Controlled. Sure. This is what I like. This is what I liked.

My nails find a place in his bare back. My hips raise to meet his, and a smile drips from his lips, our torsos pressed together. He envelops me. His arms, his legs, his body a construct around me. A cage, locking me in. The friction is there, rubbing a fire in my nerves that grows slowly more intense. But my mind is elsewhere. It's hidden itself under a blanket with a torch, reading a diary of memories.

Tori's never sure. When she kisses me it's desperate, and hard, breaths taken only for necessity. Her mouth is hot and melting, gasping, and her hands cling to me like she's scared to let me go. Like she's afraid I'll fly away. Her skin is soft and yielding, easily marked. She's scared to kiss me and scared not to. She's out of control, and when I'm with her, I am too. And too often we clash and miss and fumble, and stutter over our touches, but somehow that desperation only heightens it. There's urgency and fear. It's fight or flight, but we're stuck in the middle.

Beck grunts softly, his lips pressing to my neck, scent of his cologne wafting into my panting mouth, drawn down into my lungs. And it doesn't make my heart beat faster. My voice makes all the right sounds, moans and pants, but his name stays trapped in my throat, jostling with another. He shudders finally, a hard thrust and groan followed by gentle kisses and soft pants, his sweating body heavy against mine. "That was nice." He says with a loose smile, dropping another light kiss on my lips, his breaths deep and slowing. And if this is what we mean by nice, then I guess I'm already being more than kind to Tori.

I trace my eyes along his sharp collarbone, skin falling gracefully away from it. I'm waiting, breath held in my clenched lungs, but the gradual unwinding of muscles that follows doesn't come. That easy weariness, that liquid languor isn't there. I'm still coiled tight, and all of a sudden Beck is too hot, too heavy, and I can't breathe.

"Get off me." My hands push at his broad shoulders, palms pressed to those long collarbones. "You're suffocating me."

Beck acquiesces, rolling beside me, his elbow digging into the bed, propping his head up. "Sorry. You okay?" He raises an eyebrow, his eyes dark and deep. They're blacker than Tori's, but just as inscrutable.

"Yeah. I'm peachy." I sit up, sweat cooling on my stomach, slick and clammy. "I'm gonna grab us coffees."

Beck watches me dress, eyes running the ridges of my limbs. "You sure you're okay?"

I turn to him, hands sweeping my hair out from under my collar, jacket shrugged on. "Yeah." I twist my mouth for a second, gaze narrowed at his dusty carpet. "You love me?" That child is crying out, arms outspread. Mazes work both ways. Just because you get in, doesn't mean you always know how to get out. It's lonely in a maze no one can get through.

Beck's lips drop the words in a low, strong voice, warm and rumbling. "I love you. Get me a latte?"

I nod, rolling my eyes. "Sure. I'll be back."

The door to my car shuts heavily, grey leather slightly cool, leaf littered light spattering the car. I smell like Beck's cologne. And my backseat smells like Tori's perfume. There's no safe place for me anymore. I just... I just wish I didn't need people, sometimes. I hate so many of them. It'd be easier to just be without anyone else entirely. Stick to cats, or the occasional annoying bird. But I need people. It's a duality I hate, and it turns inward on myself. I can't stop myself from loving Beck, I can't stop myself from fucking Tori. I can't stop myself from wanting both of them. I can barely even stop myself from acting on it. Because I don't want Tori. But I do. The emotion comes out as violence, as anger, as harsh words and desperate kisses, and whispers that cut like broken glass.

It's everything dirty and primal and base. It's pounding blood and racing hearts and adrenaline and something hot and churning in my gut. And with Beck it isn't like that. It's okay. Beck is safe. It's warm and slow and easy. If Beck is a stream, then Tori is rapids, full of sharp rocks and long drops. But you don't see people sailing streams for fun.

I drive to Starbucks on autopilot, a sheet thrown over the machinery of my mind. It's ticking away, gears grinding, but I've muted the noise and turned my eyes away from it. Let it cogitate on its own. I focus instead on the low music playing over my stereo, deep thudding beats and frenetic guitars, accompanied by an oddly sweet voice, weaving in between the hard rhythms like a thread of gold. Sometimes I love music more than I could ever love a person. It speaks to me like no one ever has. It whispers more sincerely, listens more intently, and maybe my mistake is I keep looking for that in people. That same soul-staring intensity. But it's just a three minute song, playing a beat with the hormones in my brain. It isn't made for me, and the people who made it don't care if I listen. Chances are, I'd hate them if I ever met them anyway. The duality again. Of both loving and hating something at the same time. It's bittersweet, but so addictive.

I come to a jolting halt at a red light, startled into awareness, hands flexing on the leather of the wheel. I switch the radio off, hissing of the tires the only sound as I travel. I pull into the parking lot, slipping into a narrow space near the front of the coffee shop. I rustle in my handbag, pulling out a half-empty bottle of perfume and obliterating Beck's scent, hands smoothing my hair out. The barista is bored and curt, voice nasal, nametag dangling off the green apron. Dante. Of course. Fake pretentious name for a fake pretentious place. I'd lift my lip to sneer, but I can't build the resentment at the moment. I'd be just as bored if I were them, and probably even ruder. I survey the audience, hissing of steam and clacking of metal behind me as I lean against the counter, a thin-lipped, blonde soccer mom shuffling past me on the way to get more sweetener, eyes narrowed suspiciously at me. There's your usual aspiring writers, who get a bigger sense of accomplishment from having people watch them write than they from publishing anything of worth. The quiet middle-aged man with slightly ruffled hair, briefcase slung at his feet, both hands wrapped around a coffee, enjoying his solitude before going home to his needy family. The gaggle of high school girls, overly frenetic in their emotions, mouths constantly agape in ghoulish grins.

I find myself trying to slide Tori into one of these groups, into one of these people I hate. But she doesn't fit. I've gone deeper than just the surface of her, and that was my first mistake. Humanising her. It's so easy to hate people when you can forget they're human, as contradictory as it sounds. You stay in the shallows, you can see right to the bottom. But the further in you wade, the more murky it gets, and soon you're finding coral reefs and paint-splashed fish and sunken ships, and people become both wonderful and tragic. But the deeper you go, the greater the risk of drowning, and I'm close to slipping under with Tori.

"West?"

I turn at the sound of the blunt voice bludgeoning the back of my neck, coffees neatly perched on the counter. "Thanks."

I'm almost into my car when I hear my message tone, muffled by my handbag. I slip the coffees into my drink holders, steam wafting from them gently. I jab myself on a nail file, rifling through my bag, swearing harshly and yanking out my phone.

Please talk to me. :(

Tori. I thought I'd washed her off with Beck, wiped her pleading words off me with his heavy touch. But she's infected me again, slipped in through cuts I leave open, just so I can breathe. I can feel her in me, with a feather touch. Please, please, please. So submissive, so pathetic. She dulls her edge, and it infuriates me. Cat breaks because she's already broken. She doesn't realise she can unsheath her sword. Tori breaks because she's scared. She doesn't want to lose anyone. Ever the diplomat. She'll throw her blade down and count on mercy.

And it works.

I throw a quick glance at the steaming coffees, giving my phone a frustrated squeeze.

Meet me in the park near your house.

I press 'send' with a groan, slamming the phone against the wheel. I can't handle the duality here, because if I hate myself, then I love her. But I certainly don't love myself at the moment. You can't take the sweet without the bitter, and it's acid on my tongue as I twist the key to rumbling life.