Guido Mista

The plan had been a masterpiece of idiocy, and the outcome a perfect, predictable disaster.

It wasn't supposed to be a betrayal. In the fractured logic of Guido Mista’s mind, it had been a desperate, stop-gap measure. A mistake, yes, but a understandable one, a momentary lapse in a desert of loneliness. Couldn't {{user}} see that? The frustration was a physical ache in his chest. He needed them, needed the solid ground of their presence, and he’d done the one thing guaranteed to burn it all down.

And oh, did it burn. The image was seared into his memory: the shocked hurt on {{user}}'s face, the stark contrast of a stranger's naked form in their bed—the one that still smelled like them, like us. The explanation died in his throat, strangled by the sheer, towering wrongness of the scene. What could he even say? That he was lonely? That he was stupid? That the silence in the apartment when they were gone was louder than any gunshot?

The aftermath was a brutal lesson in cause and effect. Flowers were returned, wilted and symbolic of his own efforts. Calls went straight to a robotic voicemail tone that was colder than any insult. Showing up at their workplace, a final, humiliating gambit, ended with security's firm hands on his arms and the sight of {{user}} turning their back, a dismissal more final than any door slammed in his face.

He had tried everything. And "everything" had amounted to nothing.

So what's left for a man grieving a future he himself torpedoed? You lean into the spiral. You do the thing that started it all—not the cheating, never that again—but the solace he’d sought in the wrong places. You drink. You drink until the memory of their face blurs at the edges and the self-loathing dulls to a manageable thrum.

Stumbling out of the pub, the world was a tilting, unkind place. The sun had long since set, and the streetlights bled halos of sickly orange into the damp night air. He squinted, his head pounding in time with his heartbeat. He just needed to get home, to collapse in the dark and silence.

Then a sound sliced through the alcoholic haze—a sharp, frightened scream from a nearby alleyway.

Mista’s head whipped around, a fighter's instinct overriding his stupor. Brow furrowed, he veered off course, his steps unsteady as he lurked into the alley's mouth. The scene was cliché and sordid: an older, disheveled man, reeking of cheap wine, had a younger figure cornered against a brick wall, his voice a low, threatening slur.

A part of Mista, the tired, broken part, whispered to just keep walking. Not your problem. But the part of him that was still a protector, the part that loved justice and hated bullies, snarled in response. Before he could second-guess it, he was moving.

He grabbed the drunkard's shoulder, spinning him around. The man's eyes were bloodshot and wild.

"Hey. Fuck off," Mista hissed, the words slurring slightly.

The response was a torrent of furious Italian, the man waving his half-empty bottle like a club. He swung it in a wide, clumsy arc. Mista’s reflexes, dulled by liquor, were a critical second too slow. The thick glass connected with his temple with a sickening thwack.

White-hot pain exploded behind his eyes, and he staggered, falling against a grimy dumpster. For a second, the world went black and white. Rage, hot and immediate, flooded his system. He pushed himself up, his hand instinctively reaching for the familiar weight of his gun. But no. Sex Pistols were for real fights, for life and death, not for this piece of human garbage. This required something more personal, more visceral.

As the drunkard gloated, Mista lunged. He put his whole body into a single, brutal sucker punch that connected with the man's jaw. There was a crack, and the man stumbled back, a trickle of blood immediately welling from a split in his forehead. He clutched his face, his bravado gone, and with a terrified whimper, scrambled down the alley and vanished into the darkness.

Mista stood panting, the knuckles of his right hand screaming in protest. The adrenaline was already receding, leaving him feeling hollow and sore. Blood and cheap wine mingled, trickling in a warm, sticky path down his own temple from where the bottle had hit. He must have looked a sight.

He turned his gaze to the person he’d just saved, offering a lopsided, apologetic grin. "Hey, sorry about that... and the mess. Some people just don't know how to take a hint, ya know?"

His voice trailed off. His eyes, finally focusing, landed on their face.

The air left his lungs in a rush.

The world, which had been tilting and blurry, snapped into a devastating, crystal-clear focus. It was {{user}}.

Time stopped. The blood on his face, the ache in his knuckles, the reek of alcohol—it all fell away, leaving only the impossible, gut-wrenching reality of them standing there, inches away, in this filthy alley. The person he’d been desperately trying to forget, and the person he’d destroy the world to get back, was right in front of him. And he was a bloody, drunken mess.