It's a Hollow Play

[Kieran Abernathy]

Kieran was preemptively irritated when he heard the knock on the door. He had been preemptively irritated already, because their ceiling was starting to leak, and because he could not figure out a way to write this letter without feeling like a creep or a pedophile or a murderer.

Then there was the knock. So he stopped staring at his empty piece of paper and sidled over to the door, carefully dodging the water dripping from the patch in the middle of the ceiling. He yanked the door open with a prepared scowl, but softened as soon as he saw Fallon standing there.

"Lock's still broken," he said, gesturing for her to step past him, "Is your housemate putting Nebuchadnezzar out to grass again?" 

@'Fallon Abernathy' @'Annette Fontaine'

  

[Fallon Abernathy]

”Yep.” Fallon said without ceremony, heading past her brother to his kitchen. There was no cake or biscuits or anything immediately eatable out on the side, so she hoisted herself up to sit on it instead. “I could hear her from down the garden path so I decided not to risk it.” She explained. The outdoor steps leading up to the first floor where the kitchen was, with their living room and then Fallon’s room above it, had broken, leaving their only front door to be the ground floor one, which led directly into Ellen’s bedroom.

“They were reciting Shakespeare again.” Fallon added, pulling an apple from her pocket and biting into it. Her flatmate had always been dramatic, but some people’s tastes were far too literary for her. “But how are you?”

  

[Kieran Abernathy]

"Well that's unsettling," Kieran said. He sat down on the arm of the slightly-lopsided couch. "I can make something if you'd like." They probably had something edible... somewhere. He was used to making it work, anyways.

"All of my friends are liberal politicos, so - how do you think?" he added, wrinkling his nose at her. It was easiest to pretend that things were normal around Fallon; he had been occasionally putting on a brave face for her since they were small.

  

[Fallon Abernathy]

Fallon shook her head. Her flatmate’s fiance rarely took his time about things, or at least not enough to merit making food. “I bet the pretty blonde one is particularly outraged.” She grinned, resisting the urge to add ‘as usual’. She generally didn’t trust men with better hair than her as a point of principle, and her brother’s friend was no different. “Has he called for the storming of a prison yet, or is he going straight for a barricade?”

  

[Kieran Abernathy]

The pretty blonde one. Key hoped that Fallon didn't mean the adjective, because if she liked Jude too then he was going to have to throw himself off a bridge.

"I think he's going straight for the barricade," Key said cheerfully, "He's been particularly energetic lately."