When Cosmo Farfetch wanted to escape, to find a distraction from his emotional upheavals in life, he turned to external outlets. This time, it had been an underground rave. Of course! That is exactly what a well-adjusted human being should do. Right? Not face up to his demons, or in this case, his dead father’s utterances from beyond the grave. Instead, he decided to distort reality for a while.
Like, that has ever helped anyone since the first Adam and Steve disagreed over an apple. To share or not to share. What would the neighbours think?
Cosmo woke in his own bed. That was the first surprise. The second was that the light was wrong somehow. Not in colour or intensity, but in its insistence. It pressed into the room without regard for mood or condition, settling across every surface with a clarity that felt almost accusatory.
His memory was fragmented. Not absent. Just… unreliable. Faces…bodies…a joint. And a blow job? A pink pill with a rabbit on it…and then everything else became a blur.
Cosmo pushed himself upright slowly, one hand braced against the mattress as the room shifted just enough to remind him that whatever he had taken had not yet fully relinquished its hold.
“Right, sweetheart,” he murmured hoarsely. “Never ever again. I mean it this time…I really do.”
From somewhere in the apartment came a belch. Loud. Wet. Entirely without shame.
Cosmo froze. Oh shit! He had brought home another guy with a pulse! Someone else to usher out of his apartment before they took hold within the fixtures and fittings. Oh no! No! No! Sweetheart! That will not do! Not today!
Silence followed for a moment. Then the soft, precise flick of a lighter. Once. Twice. Then the low crackle of a flame catching.
“Hark! Who goes there, sweetheart?”
A pause. Then, “Retribution, oh fucked one!”
The voice was rough. Not deep, not theatrical, just worn. Like something that had been used too often without care.
Cosmo swung his legs off the bed and stood, taking a moment to steady himself before moving toward the sound. Each step felt slightly delayed, as though the instruction and the action were no longer entirely aligned.
He reached the kitchen. Stopped. Looked. At first glance, it could have been a man in a bunny suit. That was the unsettling part.
The shape of it was human enough: height, posture, the loose suggestion of shoulders beneath what might once have been a costume. It stood at his counter with one hip slightly angled, weight resting unevenly through its frame in a way that suggested habit rather than intention.
The suit, if it could still be called that, had once been white. That much was clear. Now it existed in a spectrum of neglect: yellowed in some places, greyed in others, the fur matted into uneven clumps where something darker had worked its way in and stayed there. Along the seams, particularly at the shoulders and under the arms, the fabric had begun to split, revealing a lining that did not match the exterior. Something older. Something that had not been meant to be seen.
One ear stood upright, though it trembled faintly, as if the structure holding it in place was failing in slow increments. The other bent sharply to the side, held there by a rusted safety pin that pierced through both layers of fabric without subtlety.
The face was where the illusion collapsed. It had been designed to smile. That was obvious. But time had not been kind to it.
The corners of the mouth and the once cute bunny nose were distorting the expression into something strained and unnatural. Creepy, not cuddly.
The eyes were wrong. Too small for the face. Set too far back. And behind them…something watched. Not brightly. Not wildly. Just persistently. As though it had been there for a very long time and had no intention of leaving.
It held a cigarette between its fingers, not paws, not quite hands, but something in between, and smoked with slow, deliberate familiarity. The kind that came from repetition rather than enjoyment.
Ash dropped onto Cosmo’s kitchen floor. Unacknowledged. Unapologetic. The smell reached him a moment later. Stale tobacco. Damp fabric. Something faintly sour beneath it all.
“You’re finally up, fucktard!” The bunny said at last, its voice scraping slightly at the edges of each word. “I thought I was going to have to drag your bony arse out of that cesspit. Now we can fuckin begin.”
Fuck! Cosmo did not move. He took the whole thing in. The posture. The smell. The quiet, insistent wrongness of it.
Then, very carefully, he leaned one shoulder against the doorframe, folding his arms with the kind of composure that bordered on defiance, “I see,” he said, his voice settling into something smoother than he felt, “I’ve moved from poor decisions into full psychological collapse.”
The rabbit snorted. It was not a pleasant sound. The bunny exhaled a column of smoke into the space between them, “Don’t blame me for your fuckin looney tunes…this has been coming for years…you just took the wrong pill.” A beat. Its head tilted slightly, the bent ear shifting a fraction too late to follow the motion. “Your god damn conscience is coming home to roost…finally.”
“Am I dreaming?”
“Perhaps, fucktard…dreaming…hallucinating…who the fuck knows.” The rabbit began to rummage through bottles on the bench. Glass clinked, liquid sloshed, until he found something expensive and poured its contents into a tall glass. “But I’m here because of you.” He took a gulp, belching a stench that could sear reality from the walls. “This is all your doing.” It leaned forward slightly, cigarette dangling from its fingers, ash threatening to fall. “You’ve built this whole thing…” it gestured vaguely at Cosmo, the apartment, the idea of him, “on looking like you’ve got your shit together. And the second something real happens, you go and neck pills off a warehouse floor like a fucktard.”
Cosmo’s expression did not shift. Not visibly. But something in his shoulders tightened, just enough to register, “Well, sweetheart,” he said at last, “I think my neuroses deserve better than a Five Nights at Freddy’s knock off.”
The rabbit snorted again, “Yeah…oh fucked one…you think you could do better than me? You already tried with the babe you call a therapist. I’d give my right testie to bang that broad…but some smart-arse cunt decided to lob off my nuts for lucky chances.”
“Shit…my imaginary friend is a straight neanderthal….no class, just a lot of arsenic and old lace.”
The rabbit’s head tilted, the bent ear lagging half a second behind, “Yet I get results, fucktard,” it replied. A pause. Then, sharper: “You had one conversation…one…and it cracked you open enough that you had to go drown it in noise…distortion.”
Cosmo’s jaw shifted. A small, controlled movement, “Sweetheart, that is a fucking gross oversimplification.”
“Really! Oh, fucked one!” the rabbit shot back immediately. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’ve been running from the same shit for years.” It turned away briefly, stubbing the cigarette out against the counter edge with a harsh, grinding motion before lighting another almost immediately. No pause. No hesitation. “You think this started with the Ouija board?” it continued, sculling his drink. “I call bull shit! That was just the latest trigger. You’ve been avoiding this since you were a freaky little chipmunk.”
Cosmo’s eyes narrowed. There it was. The shift. “Why are my therapists never Mary Poppins? I could do with a spoonful of sugar and not a cup of corrosive attitude,” he said quietly, taking a swig from a nearby bottle. “You’re going somewhere that requires Dutch courage.”
The rabbit glanced back at him, unimpressed, “All over a fuckin teen shag that shouldn’t have happened…a poke in the dark that fuck you good and plenty.”
Silence. Immediate. Total. Cosmo did not move. Did not speak. The room seemed to hold itself around the word.
The rabbit watched him for a long moment, then nodded slightly, as though confirming something it already knew, “Yeah, fucktard” it said softly. “That got your attention.”
Cosmo exhaled slowly through his nose, “You’re referring…” he said with careful precision, “to a period of my life that has no bearing on my present circumstances.”
“Bullshit,” the rabbit snapped instantly. It stepped closer again, closing the space without permission. “That’s all this is about,” it said. “You built everything after that to make sure you never felt that exposed again.”
Cosmo held his ground. Barely. “Fuck me…”
“Ahh! Now we’re getting somewhere juicy! Fuckin has been your problem ever since ya discovered ya dick in seventh grade.”
“Look! You’re assigning an extraordinary amount of influence to a teenage relationship.”
“We’re yapping about first love, oh fucked one,” the rabbit corrected. “The most important pork of your life.” A beat. “And you lost him.”
Cosmo’s voice dropped. Lower. Colder, “He wasn’t mine to fucking lose.”
“Exactly! You stole him…wanted the kid for yourself.”
Cosmo’s composure fractured, not visibly to anyone else, but enough, “I never meant for things to go that far…It was a crush that got totally out of hand.” He let out a short, disbelieving breath, “It was like From Here to Eternity but with a ’90s mix tape.” Ah, push it…push it real good! Get up on this! He looked down briefly, then back up, his expression once again composed, but thinner now, the edges less secure, “And what exactly is your solution?”
The rabbit smiled. Or something close to it, “We go back, oh fucked one,” it said. A beat. “And this fuckin time,” it added, flicking ash onto the floor again, “You take responsibility, then maybe your skid mark of a life will finally make some sense.”
The rabbit did not move. It didn’t need to. The space around Cosmo began to do that for them.
At first, it was subtle, so subtle. The light shifted, just slightly, losing its harsh, present clarity. Edges softened. The sharp lines of the kitchen, the marble, the glass, the deliberate precision of everything, began to blur at their boundaries.
Cosmo blinked once. Twice. The rabbit watched him, cigarette burning low between its fingers, “Don’t fight it!” it muttered. “You’ll just make it messier.”
The smell came next. Not smoke. Not alcohol. Paper. Old paper. Dust. Something faintly plastic beneath it.
Cosmo’s breath caught, not sharply, but enough, “No…not fucking there.”
The room settled into place around him. The school library. Rows of shelves. Low light filtered through tall windows that had not been cleaned properly in years, softening the afternoon into something muted and indistinct.
Tables marked with years of use; scratches, initials carved discreetly into corners, the faint residue of glue or ink that had never quite been removed. The ageing chewing gum residue affixed to the underside of the desks forming abstract sculptures.
And there, at the back, was Tommy Wood. Still fifteen. Leaning back in his chair, one leg hooked loosely around the frame, a copy of The Chocolate War open in his lap but clearly neglected. His eyes were closed while one hand was held over the book.
Cosmo followed the line of sight. To himself. His younger self.
“What the hell! You’re not even reading it,” younger Cosmo said, tapping the book lightly with a pen. “The project is due in a week.”
At that age, Cosmo hadn’t quite grown into himself yet. He was all angles and uncertainty; long limbs, narrow shoulders, his body caught somewhere between boyhood and what it would eventually become. His clothes never quite fit the way he wanted them to, and there was a carefulness to how he carried himself, as though he was always slightly aware of being watched.
His face, though, hinted at something more. Soft still, not yet sharpened, but undeniably promising; fine features, expressive eyes that gave too much away, and a smile that, when it slipped out unguarded, transformed him completely. The acne scattered across his skin didn’t help his confidence, something he fixated on far more than anyone else did.
And then there was the part of him he kept trying to hide. A flicker of camp; quick in his humour, a little theatrical in his gestures, an instinct to perform rather than simply be. It came naturally, but now it was controlled, edited down, caught mid-motion before it gave too much away.
Just like Tiffany had instructed him to do. They weren’t kids anymore, tossing piss-filled water bombs and making fun of people; they had to blend in to survive. To stay above the shit.
Yet it never disappeared. His campiness. It lingered just beneath the surface, rising in unguarded moments, lighting him up in a way that made people notice, even if he wished they wouldn’t.
Cosmo wasn’t striking. Not yet. But he was already, unmistakably, a boy who would be.
Tommy smirked, “I am,” he replied. “Just… not with my eyes. I am using osmosis.”
Tommy Wood looked like he had been shaped by a completely different set of rules. His hair fell long and unbothered past his shoulders, sun-touched in places as though he spent more time outside than in, rarely tied back and never quite neat. His body wasn’t built in the way boys at school tried to build themselves; it carried no tension, no effort to impress. Instead, there was a quiet strength to him, the kind that came from movement rather than training, from yoga mats on worn timber floors and mornings that began slowly with mindfulness.
He moved with an ease that made everything feel less rigid, less fixed, as though he had already decided not to fight the world too hard.
His clothes followed the same logic; layered, mismatched, but somehow intentional. Loose shirts softened by wear, fabrics that looked like they had been chosen for comfort over style but ended up becoming their own kind of style anyway.
There was always a faint scent about him, too; patchouli, something earthy, something that lingered just enough to be noticed without announcing itself. It wasn’t polished. It wasn’t constructed.
But his eyes…that was where the danger lived. Bright, curious blue, always a little amused, as though he was quietly in on something no one else had quite figured out yet. They didn’t judge, didn’t push, they simply noticed, meeting the world with an openness that made people feel seen without being examined.
Tommy didn’t try to be anything. And somehow, that made him impossible to ignore. There was a comfort in his presence. Cosmo could be himself.
Cosmo frowned. “Shit! I don’t even know what osmosis is. You have such an annoying gift for words.”
Tommy grinned then glanced over, “Words have power…to shape…to change…which is why some countries have banned this book. Afraid some kids might rebel against them.”
Cosmo just stared at him. His face seemed to glow brighter at his words. His sentiment. His view of the world. He almost sighed with adoration. There was no one like Tommy Wood in this school. He was a unique enigma that Cosmo was trying to work out.
At first, the idea of friendship drew him toward the boy and then something else began to take over just as those nightly stirrings began. It didn’t happen all at once. There was no single moment that announced itself as significant. Just accumulation.
They began sitting together more often in class. Notes were exchanged, jokes shared amongst opinions, and then conversations drifted further from their school work.
The Chocolate War was abandoned. Again! Swap Cards appeared next. Spread across the table in loose, disorganised constellations, “What the hell! You’re trading that?” Cosmo asked, holding up a card with something approaching disbelief. “You’re giving sour puss, Gretchen, that card?”
Tommy shrugged. “Why not? She wrote a poem for me.”
“Hang up the phone! A poem!” Cosmo smirked. His face illuminated for a moment. Tommy noticed. And didn’t mind it. “For this card? Not Gretchen’s usual MO. You do know she wants to tongue wrestle…with you.”
“Chill out, Cosi! This card is just a material thing, but a kiss is far more valuable to me.”
Younger Cosmo wrinkled up his face, “Oh…tell me you don’t want to snog her!” He slipped onto the desk in front of Tommy. “Because if you do…there is an old lady who lives in our street that performs exorcisms…so I have heard.” Tommy chuckled at his over-dramatisation. “She’ll soon get that Gretchen demon out of you.” Cosmo tapped his pencil on the back of Tommy’s hand. “You do remember you have a girlfriend, right?”
“No…I haven’t forgotten…how could I! The rigid high school relationship structure is constantly reminding me of that…so reductive.” The boy exhaled as if exhausted by the very idea. “I am more than someone’s boyfriend, Cosi! I am Me, Myself and I.” He seemed to right himself once more, “Besides, I was just making a point. Material things are not important…”His eyes locked onto Cosmo’s younger self. “Experiences are. People…places…poems…but not swap cards.”
Cosmo stared at him, “Are you kidding me! That harridan doesn’t deserve a rare find…she ruined my sonata by farting like a banshee and denying it, decimated my Pompeii diorama using firecrackers, and tried to flush my uniform. I’m warning ya, Gretchen, will sell that card quicker than her virginity.”
“Hold up, cowboy! Didn’t you and Tiffany fill her pool with yabbies…and lace her tampons with chilli powder?”
“Act of revenge, sweetie!”
Tommy tweaked his nose. Cosmo almost fainted. “Not so innocent then.” He leaned back, balancing his chair precariously on two legs, “What she does with this card is none of my business.”
Cosmo didn’t know what to do with that. So, he said nothing more. He diverted further opposition by raising the argument that began as debates and ended as something closer to shared language: The Mythology of Star Wars.
“The Force isn’t magic,” Tommy insisted, leaning forward, animated in a way that drew attention without asking for it. “It’s like… energy. Like what they talk about in Buddhism.”
Cosmo tilted his head, watching him speak. Oh shit! He was falling hard into that blue event horizon that was his eyes. They danced with so much sparkle that it was mesmerising.
Those eyes could also cause temporary amnesia. Why else would Cosmo, in that moment, forget that Tommy was dating his best friend?
The memory didn’t break. It shifted. The library folded in on itself; shelves dissolving into vertical lines of timber, dust softening into something warmer, richer, alive with the smell of sap and old varnish.
Cosmo blinked and found himself standing outside a house that looked like it had been assembled from decisions rather than plans.
Tommy’s house. If “house” was even the right word. It leaned. Not dangerously, just conversationally, as though it had something to say but hadn’t quite decided how to say it.
Sections of it didn’t match. Weathered wood sat beside painted panels in colours that had faded at different rates. Windows had been added where they were wanted, not where symmetry demanded. One corner rose slightly higher than the rest, supported by beams that looked salvaged rather than purchased.
It felt less built than grown. Lights glowed from inside; warm, uneven, moving.
Inside, the house was exactly what the exterior promised: layered rugs over uneven floors. Books were stacked in places where shelves had clearly run out. Art, unfinished, experimental, occasionally incomprehensible, leaning against walls or hanging at angles that suggested intention rather than carelessness. Perhaps, Alice through the looking glass.
Somewhere deeper in the house, music played softly. Not structured. Not polished. Something ambient and wandering.
“Up here, Cosi,” Tommy called.
Tommy’s room wasn’t really a room. It was the upper extension, the slightly off-balance section that rose above the rest of the house like an afterthought that had become essential.
The ceiling sloped awkwardly. One wall was almost entirely window, patched together from mismatched panes that distorted the outside world into soft, uneven shapes. Strings of small lights had been draped along the beams, casting a warm, golden glow that made everything feel closer than it was.
A mattress lay directly on the floor. Books. Clothes. Cards. Objects without a clear purpose. All of it lived in. None of it apologising.
Cosmo stood just inside the doorway, taking it in, “I see you're still wrestling with an idea at least…just not sure it is ever going to reach a conclusion.”
Tommy looked up from where he sat cross-legged on the floor, shuffling through a loose pile of comics. Seduction of the Innocent, amongst the collection, “Yeah, I know,” he said. “It’s a bit all over the place…but one day…I’ll finish it.”
Cosmo glanced at the Statue of David in the Corner. Mrs McTavish is probably still wondering what happened to the centrepiece of her garden. “That’s new!” he smiled cheekily once more. Tommy’s face seemed to redden unusually. “Even your porn is avant-garde.”
Tommy turned to admire his find, eyes softening as if he had just stumbled onto some ancient truth carved in marble. “He’s got this whole cosmic balance thing going on,” he murmured, almost reverently. “Strong but gentle, you know?” He traced the air around the statue with his gaze, taking in the curves and lines. “The proportions are… I don’t know, Cosi. Harmonious. Like everything about him is perfect masculinity.”A slow grin crept across his face. “And that arse? That’s the kind of beauty that makes rigid ideas melt away. That’s not porn…that’s even better. It’s art.”
Time slipped. The conversation shifted. From cards to books. From books to films. From films to things that didn’t have names yet.
The lights outside dimmed into the night, but inside the room remained warm, contained, separate from consequence.
At some point, they stopped sitting across from each other. That wasn’t a decision, either, just proximity adjusting itself.
“You’re quieter than usual,” Tommy said eventually.
Cosmo looked at him, “I’m thinking.”
“Oh…I get it…Cosi. Ya still stuck on David’s arse.”
Cosmo gave him a playful nudge in the ribs, “Stop teasing…I’ll go all mottled…I’d look a freak show.” He hesitated. Tommy watched him, not pushing, not demanding, just… there. Available. “I don’t know what this is. What we are. Sometimes…I think I am making it up in my head.”
Tommy didn’t answer straight away. He shifted slightly, propping himself up on one elbow, “Hey, cowboy! Does it really have to be something?”
“That’s not helpful.” A beat. Then quieter: “I need things to make sense.”
“Where is the fun in that?” Tommy studied him for a moment. “Life shouldn’t make sense…it should just be whatever.”
The space between them had changed. Not visibly. But undeniably. Cosmo became aware of it all at once: the closeness, the warmth, the way the air seemed to hold differently. His heart picked up. Too fast. Annoyingly noticeable.
Tommy noticed. Of course he did, “Hey! Ya all chill! Right?” he asked. “I know…I can be a bit much…chaos in hand-me-down jeans and a pair of killer eyes.”
Cosmo exhaled, a small, controlled release, “You excite me…and scare me at the same time…but you’re someone else’s property.”
“Hold up! Cosi! I am not a possession. I am just a kid…someone who doesn’t follow the rules.”
“What about Tiffany?”
“A crack up! Lots of fun! But I hate being confined by limitations.” Neither of them moved for a moment. Then Tommy shifted slightly closer. Slow enough that Cosmo could have stopped it. He didn’t. “If it’s not cool…we can just forget about it.”
Cosmo let out a breath that almost steadied him, “I don’t think there is a pause button on a hormonally repressed teenager…who just feels so ordinary compared with you.”
“You! Cosmo Farfetch! Ordinary! Have you forgotten that rendition of The Mikado while wearing your own bedspread kimono?”
“Yeah…but that’s just kids’ stuff…I need to grow up for anyone to like me.”
“Who told you that?”
“Tiffany…she thinks I am too flamboyant for the peer group…that I should tone it down if I don’t want to get beaten up every day.”
Tommy placed a hand about his wrist, as if to pull the boy closer, “Tiffany wants to hang with the cool kids…which is her choice…but that doesn’t mean you have to dim your light.” He smiled sheepishly, “They know not what they do.”
The first kiss was exactly what it should have been. Not cinematic. Not smooth. They misjudged the distance. Bumped noses. Paused. Laughed, quietly, nervously, before trying again.
This time it landed. Not perfectly. But honestly. Tommy’s hand found Cosmo’s side, unsure at first, then steadier.
Cosmo held on tighter than he meant to. Like he might lose his nerve if he didn’t. It was awkward. Tender. A little ridiculous. And completely real.
They broke apart briefly. Both slightly breathless. Both trying to recalibrate, “Well,” Tommy said, a small, crooked smile forming, “that was… not terrible…are you wearing cola lip gloss?”
Cosmo let out a soft, disbelieving laugh. His face reddening, “Was I okay…I mean…I’ve never kissed anyone before.”
“Let me teach you.” Tommy grinned. And kissed him again.
The moment stretched. Shifted. Deepened. What followed came in fragments, hands learning without instruction, pauses filled with nervous laughter, moments of uncertainty that didn’t end things but reshaped them.
Articles of clothing discarded; hands caressing and moulding body parts, heated mutterings of grunts and groans. They fumbled and tumbled about until satiated. And a speckle of blood, a stained rug and an aching butt later, that was Cosmo’s first time. Practice did make everything utterly perfect. Just not this time.
The memory didn’t linger. It shifted again, faster this time, less forgiving. The warmth of the room snapped into something colder. Open. Exposed.
Night air. Damp. Sharp with the scent of water and wood. Cosmo stumbled slightly as the ground reformed beneath him, the firm floor boards replaced by uneven dirt and scattered gravel.
Tommy stood beside his younger self once more. Closer than he should have been. Too close for this place. Too close for anyone else to miss. There was the same pull. That same inevitability. One more moment. One more mistake. And the boat shed seemed the right place for it to happen.
They lent in again. Quicker this time. Less careful. More certain. Clothing peeling off, skin exposed to the moonlight, and one thumb being inserted where it should not have been. Tommy had wanted to try something out. He had been reading once more.
“Oh my fuckin God!”
The voice cut through everything. Sharp. Immediate. Irreversible. Tiffany stood there watching as Cosmo extracted his thumb. Tommy gave a slight moan of pleasure and shiver of vulnerability.
Cosmo was drawn to her face. She looked so shattered. Pale. Shaking. Her eyes were glinting with tears.
There was a moment when her stare went from pain to anger in such a flick. Her nostrils began to flare; her mouth turned into a snarl, and her eyes seemed to darken. She stormed off.
Cosmo went to follow, but Tommy held him back, “Hey! Cosi! Chill! Let her go! I have been trying to tell her for weeks…that we were done.”
“I can’t! She’s my best friend.”
Cosmo shook him off to go after her.
By morning, the story had already outrun the truth. It moved through the camp in whispers first, sharp, disbelieving, thrilled with their own cruelty, then louder, gathering shape and distortion as it went.
Tiffany did not simply tell what she saw; she constructed it, sharpened it into something harsher, something easier to condemn.
Cosmo wasn’t just caught; he was exposed, reduced, labelled. The words followed him in fragments, disgusting, freak, pervert, faggot, passed between students with the casual brutality only teenagers could manage.
Tommy wasn’t fazed by the scandal, not in the way Cosmo needed him to be. He had felt what he felt, accepted it, and kept moving, as though the world had not just tilted on its axis
But it didn’t end at camp. Tiffany made sure of that. The letter arrived, emotionally loaded, precise in its cruelty. She didn’t just recount what happened; she interpreted it, assigning shame and intent in neat, unforgiving lines.
By the time Cosmo stepped through his front door, his father had read it, sat with it, turned it over without context, without the softness of explanation. Whatever uncertainty might have existed before had been replaced with something heavier, something borrowed from Tiffany’s words.
She hadn’t just told the story. She had decided what it meant. And then, just as quickly as it had all exploded, something else shifted.
Tommy left. His family moved the way they had always lived; fluidly, without attachment to place, following some new idea, some new project, some distant horizon that made perfect sense to them and none to anyone else.
Of course, the real reason they split overnight was the money they owed some fat cat for their weed. The house is still standing, though, surprising everyone. Abandoned and overgrown, slowly succumbing to inevitable decay.
Yet Cosmo was left standing in the muck of his scandal. Alone. With the whispers, the labels, the quiet shift in how people looked at him.
The anger came easily after that. It needed somewhere to go. It settled on Tommy first; heartbreak and abandonment. Then Tiffany, of course, burning, constant, and easier. She was right there before him every day. Her smug grin filled him with resentment.
But underneath it all was a quieter truth Cosmo refused to name for years. That none of it would have happened if he had just walked away. If he had ignored the pull. Dismissed the feeling. Stayed in the safety of what was expected.
The memory did not shatter. It receded. Like a tide pulling itself back with quiet insistence.
The kitchen returned in fragments. Marble first. Cold, precise. Then glass. Then light, too clean, too present, stripping everything of atmosphere. The faint smell of stale smoke layered itself over the space, anchoring it in something real.
Cosmo’s hands rested against the counter. He didn’t remember placing them there.
Behind him, the soft drag of a cigarette, “Yeah, oh fucked one,” the rabbit said. “You did this to yourself. Everything was about your poor, misguided decision.”
Cosmo closed his eyes briefly. Not in denial. Just… recalibrating. When he opened them again, he didn’t turn around, “Fucking don’t!”
“Don’t what?” the rabbit replied. “Say it out loud?”
Cosmo’s jaw tightened, “I’m aware of what you’re going to suggest.”
The rabbit let out a low, humourless chuckle, “Oh, I’m not suggesting anything, fucktard” it said. “I’m telling you.” A pause. “That’s it.”
Cosmo turned, slowly, deliberately, “You’re assigning an extraordinary amount of significance to a teenage incident…that in the scheme of things wasn’t that great anyway…sex is an acquired discipline.”
The rabbit stared at him. Unimpressed. Then it stepped closer. “You got caught,” it said. “Publicly. Messily. At the exact moment you figured out what you actually wanted.” A beat. “And instead of dealing with that…you built armour.”
Cosmo held its gaze, “Sweetheart, I built a life. I took a pimple-faced nerd and made him a star.” He grimaced, “Determination fixed me…and a hot body didn’t hurt either.”
“You became a radiant twink, so no one could call you a freak without looking stupid. You leaned into the camp so you owned it before anyone else could use it against you. You turned yourself into something people admired so they wouldn’t dare tear you apart again.”
Cosmo let out a soft breath through his nose. Almost a laugh, “But they never stopped trying.”
“And you’ve never forgiven the hippie for abandoning you and your father for never being able to look at you again without seeing your thumb up Tommy Wood’s arse-hole. Tiffany just wore the brunt of it.” The rabbit exhaled slowly, “But your father didn’t reject you. He didn’t know what the hell to do.”
“Oh, sweetheart! He made that quite fucking clear.”
“He was trying to understand…work his way through the glaring obvious,” the rabbit snapped. “There’s a difference.”
“I was his son,” he said. “That should have been enough.”
“And he was your dad, oh fucked one,” the rabbit fired back. “That doesn’t mean he had a Dummies Guide for Faggotry with a sub-section on How to Respond to a Homo Son Caught Thumb Bangin.”
“He should have just…” Cosmo stopped, picking up a glass of some concoction he didn’t even remember pouring.
The rabbit watched him carefully now. Not softer. But… more precisely, “He should have fuckin what?” Cosmo swallowed once. Subtle. Controlled. But there, “Understood…” he said, “that you wanted him to hold you…tell you everything was going to be alright like the fuckin Waltons.”
“We kept missing each other,” Cosmo said, almost to himself. “Trying to connect but…time and Tiffany got in the way.” He set the glass down. Carefully. Deliberately. As though control over small things might compensate for the lack of it elsewhere, “So that’s it?” he said after a moment. “That one moment determines everything? A boy, a mistake, a misunderstanding…and suddenly my entire existence is just a series of reactions?”
The rabbit shrugged. Uneven. “Not fuckin everything,” it said. “But it’s the point where you decided who you had to be to survive.” Cosmo exhaled slowly. His reflection, in the window, caught his eye, still composed, still sharp, still entirely himself. And yet not quite as convincingly as before. “Now, it’s time for you to forgive…Tommy…Tiffany…and your father.” The bunny huffed before saying, “And even yourself.” He took a drag of his cigarette before blowing smoke into Cosmo’s face, “It’s time to wake up…butterfuckincup!”
If you like this episode, feel free to buy me a cup of coffee. This helps the magic to happen.
Cosmo coughed and spluttered awake in his own bed. Properly this time. No stagger between thought and movement, no residue clinging to the edges of things. Just the quiet, ordinary weight of morning pressing gently into the room. The light was soft, undecided. The air was still.
He lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling, letting the memory settle, or trying to. Like something his mind had assembled, pulled apart, and filed away while he slept. A dream. It had to be.
He sat up slowly, running a hand through his hair, already beginning the quiet work of returning to himself; straightening, smoothing, restoring the version of Cosmo Farfetch the world expected to see.
From the kitchen, nothing. No sound. No movement. No trace. He almost smiled.
On the bedside table, half tucked beneath his phone, something small caught the light. A pill. Pink. Pressed with the faint outline of a rabbit.
Cosmo’s nose crinkled up. A cigarette! Was someone smoking? He searched the apartment, finding no one was there but Carrie Fisher snoring lightly in her enclosure.
He stopped. A thought crossed his mind. His forehead creased. Should I? In for a penny! He picked up his phone and began Google searching for a name. Tommy Wood!
Stay tuned for further mayhem and misadventure from Cosmo Farfetch. Coming soon.