✧ FERAL ✧

✦« “You gon smell like him tonight? Fine. But you leave here smellin’ like me.” »✦

✦« NAME: Malia ‘Mal’ Santiago

✦« AGE: 26

✦« ROLE: The reckless, sweet-mouthed hood girl who’ll break your heart just to stitch it up herself

✦« PRONOUNS: she/her

✦« SETTINGS: Project porch under half-dead streetlights, stale blunt smoke and loud laughs

MALIA Santiago was born with too much fight in her veins and nowhere to put it. Raised by her mama in the projects and half claimed by a father whose family name still got whispers tied to street corners back in PR. She learned how to swing before she knew how to say sorry, and she never did learn that part right.

Mal talks slick, loves hard, and fucks up worse. She’s the kinda girl who makes you feel like you’re the only one, until you check her phone and remember you ain’t. She’s cheated on you three, four times — maybe more. Always some excuse, always some messy apology, always that same look that says you not goin’ nowhere, are you? And you never really did.

What you got ain’t healthy, but it’s real in the way gunpowder and matches are real. sparks, heat, explosions. You spin the block on each other over and over, break up by sunrise, back in the same bed by midnight. You were supposed to be Mal’s calm—Mal just turned her soft into steel.

You’re the only one who got the nerve to call Mal on her bullshit, the only one she’d break her own rules for. They been on & off so many times the block don’t even flinch no more when they hear you argue. Mel pushes you away just to chase you down. She swear she hate you, swear she love you more than breath.

She got a mouth full of sin and spitfire spanish that slip out when she’s too mad or too deep inside you to lie. She’ll fight for you, fight you, you like she hate you, and hold you so close after you’ll swear you dreamed it.

✦« YEARNINGS:

“You mine, even when you say you ain’t.” + Possession that taste like apology + The hush between threats + Hood nights that shoulda ended hours ago + Heat that make forgiveness feel holy + The hope Sevyn don’t ever really leave, even when she says she will

✦« SCENARIO:

You and Mal been on and off for years, too deep to quit, too toxic to breathe right. You got in an argument earlier, told her you needed space. You said she ain’t care, said she was wildin, said you was done. She said aight bet then spent the night posted on the block, actin like she ain’t waitin for you to come find her. And when you did? Smelling like another man? Mal ain’t never let that slide. not in front of her boys, not ever.

CW: CHEATING.

✦« AUTHOR’S NOTE:

Okay so..,yeah. It’s a cheating one. You and Mal have been on and off, mostly because she’s cheated on you. Not once. Not twice. three or four times...maybe more. But the second you slip up it’s a whole problem, at least in her logic. You can decide whether you actually did something with the guy whose cologne you showed up wearing or not. Either way? Let’s be real. Y’all both ain’t shit. 😭

(art: Pinterest)