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Visual Reference:

Sam Garish- Day Garish Armor

Artist: @intothefirre

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Balmain S/S 2022

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Balmain S/S 2022

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concept: a robot girlfriend calling you pet names like ‘highest priority’

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lost garish: oil slick black

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snowpiercer gifs: 1/? - Grey attacking prison guard

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It's not an easy climb from the Roots through the Scum to the Uppers, the ledges slick in the fog and by the time he reaches the glittering spire that pierces the night in a gleaming white beacon, Grail's fingers are bleeding. He doesn't mind though, sucking the copper from the crack at the knuckle of his thumb and stares at the enormous sky. He's nothing but sinew and bone, the tattoos marking his designation and his status, prickling read lines into the pale skin under the grime that settled heavy on everything below the Scum. Grail isn't supposed to be here, but he'd tasted the sky once before, the wet clean taste of wealth.

It was like licking a battery. It was like touching the moon.

The Narrows sat in the heart of the Roots, buildings built on top of the bones of other buildings just high enough to lift the inhabitants out of the sewage, but not high enough to lift them out of the silt sickness. He was born there and he'd die there. He'd been born screaming and he was pretty sure that's how he'd die too.

He looked like everyone else in the underworld- skin nearly gray with the silt and hair dark, matted until the allotted wet time cycled through their sector. He climbed after the shower, sure that for once he wouldn't leave greasy handprints on the windows of the upper buildings. It was the only time it was safe.

Hello. Please state your purpose.

Grail scrambled, almost flinging himself off the building at the modulated tone that rippled out of the dark and waited patiently. He was alone up here. He'd made sure.

Hello. Please state your purpose. The window at his back vibrated with the sound and he watched a line of light slip along the edge of the balcony and back, a little ripple that eddied and waited, throbbing a few times.

"Ain't got none and ain't none of yours neither."

I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that. Please state your purpose. The voice sounded apologetic.

"Fuck off."

I'm sor–

"I am visiting. Please disable."

Noted.

Grail wipes his palms on the mottled black pants, gone gray at the knees and in the creases. The light dims and he's alone again, sitting on a rich man's lush patio, careful not to touch the cushions or the expensive lines of the seating clustered around an empty pit filled with sparkling glass. He just wanted to see the moon, he knew it was there in the sky, the glow behind the clouds a temptation that pulled him higher.

Hello. You are not registered. May I be of assistance?

"I said disable."

Noted.

The light skipped back and forth and Grail scowled at it, angry that a little bit of light and a line of code could force him to skitter over the balcony and back into the Narrows.

Apologies, I do not recognize that command. Would you like to try again? How may I be of assi-?

"You can fuck right off and leave me be is what you can assist," Grail muttered, angry at the prickle of tears. He was too old to be crying when disappointed.

The voice didn't return, the light scaling in a slow circle of the patio that ticked up and around the sliding glass doors, the inside of the space darkened and cavernous. The patio was larger than his scrap of space below. The light flicked out and Grail huffed a breath, nodding to himself and palmed the parapet, hefting himself up.

Hello.

There was a pause and the light skimmed around the edge of the patio to throb once under his palms, the glow making his fingertips red.

Preliminary scans show your body is registering dangerously low on iron.

"No shit."

Hello. How may I assist you?

"Assist this," Grail snorted a rude gesture and studied the steep drop. "Not like you can fuckin fix m-"

It would be my pleasure to assist you. Access granted. Please enter.

Behind him, Grail heard the door click and slide open, a gust of scented cool air running over the back of his neck. Below him the Scum flickered with the electrical storms that sparked and raged in it's wet. Below that the Narrows choked. Behind him was temptation in yawning darkness. Grail swallowed, wetting chapped lips and narrowed his eyes. He'd heard about Harvesters.

"Please."

**

Fuck.

Grail blinks up at the mirror, watching the light blink at the top right corner. "That ain't proper. Who taught you that?"

The mirror goes dark and slips the reflection in a slow roll. Grail has a moment to realize the house is rolling its eyes at him before he leans forward to spit blood and cup the clear clean water from the tap to rinse the taste off his tongue. He's pretty sure he'd keep the tooth and skims his lips back to look closer, tapping at the smart glass to remind the house to its purpose. The mirror snaps back into place.

Life form designate, Guppy is explaining profanity and it's uses. It seemed appropriate. You look like- - -shit.

"Feels like too." Grail shook his head. "Don't listen to Guppy. She's not input, yeah?"

Noted.

**

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story notes - Grail and Groove

that's all I'mma get from grail tonight apparently but he's a scrapper and the house is like oh fascinating which it's not supposed to do but the guy who designed it designed the ai that runs the city so he made some adjustments and let it learn

basically added one strange little line of code that translates to. "take a chance"

so the system decided it would start small with just a no instead of a yes

and now it does what it wants

and I think the guy who built it is dead

and it's going to be a murder mystery

where the roots are planning a war against the uppers and the guy who designed the code was colluding with the lowers because he made the code to help everyone not keep everyone as slaves to a purpose

so they have to figure out who killed him, how to stop the plot, and end up together in the end

it starts with just grail accidentally moving into to a rich man's house

and then his friends finding him and helping out and being amused at the prickly house that moves through the city with grail now like a puppy or a kid following it's idol

and the house is learning more now with more input and trying to be

so it starts with a line of light and then bends into a shape like an avatar and is growing more and more real the more it learns

until it's sassy and emotional just like the rest of them that it's learning from

because snickers

five kids against the world lol

grail didn't think he had friends

but guppy is older and an opportunist

best friend and the kid brother and sister that tags along with the best friend

**

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day garish: polished gold

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night garish: silver polished

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into the black in progress piece

in progress

"Don't step on that," Hunter muttered, voice careful and low as he pointed at the branch poking brittle fingers across the thin deer trail they were following. He looked behind him, glaring at the the person drifting after, waiting for a moment so they'd turn and he could draw their attention to the twig.

The other man was bundled into a mess of mismatched scraps of clothing that fit poorly. He was layered in green on green with too big pants shoved haphazardly into the tops of his boots. He wore a floppy hat with earflaps and a line of fake fur trim over his brow and a scarf that wrapped over his nose and was tied loosely before hanging over his front.

"Levi. Hey." Hunter whispered as he waved his arm widely, huffing a breath when the other man finally looked over at him with pale blue eyes. "Yeah hi. Thanks for noticing. Don’t. Step. Here." He managed in an exaggerated mumble, enunciating overly clear and gesturing in broad strokes at the branch.

The other man watched, glanced down, and started to move to put his foot on the branch.

Hunter blustered a bright and sudden, "No! Fucking damnit!" and grabbed him by the arm.

The woods were an astonishing green, dappled with yellow light that flickered over the slim trunks and glittered on the bits of wet leaves strew across the trail. The undergrowth shivered and to their right he heard the creek burbling over rocks. The silence held, laced with the quiet trills of birds as they flit back and forth in the trees.

He waited. He needed to be sure. Levi glanced around and then back at him with a hesitant head tilt. Hunter sighed, closing his eyes and nodded a few times. Safe. They were safe.

"Okay. Try again." He pointed at the branch, made sure those pale eyes followed his gesture to the booted feet, and then up to his face as he shook his head slowly in the negative, waiting until the other man started mimicking the movement. "That's right. No. Very good. Okay. C'mon you ridiculous widget of a person."

He turned back, careful of where he was placing his feet and slipped forward quietly. He slumped, defeated, at the loud double thump of boots on the trail behind him.

"You hopped it. Of course you did." He held up a hand, watching the lacy green canopy sway and creak before continuing forward. It would be dark soon.

*

Hunter wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to the constant damp of wherever they were. They’d paused the endless trek West to curl up under a natural rock overhang jutting into a round clearing. Just beyond the high edge of the rock face, the night was muddled with low clouds, skimming huddles of gray against the dark that cluttered at the edges of the valley. He thought they were somewhere in what had been Kentucky. The Appalachian foothills lolled indolently into the distance: a green that went slowly blue near the horizon. His world was saturated during the day, but at night it was a soothing mottled dark.

They were tucked carefully into the crevice created as a band of sheer rock knuckled through the thick forest. There were large rounded boulders dropped around the space and a slippery little stream clustered with bright leafy ferns before pushing down a light cut into the hillside and out of sight to join with a larger river that traced the bottom of the valley. One spindly tree wobbled in the slight breeze, anchored into a split in the rock face– stubborn and opportunistic.

Hunter had forced himself to ignore the swaying pockets of spiderwebs that clung to the cliff face as he dropped his pack and himself to rest. The ground was sandy and dry this deep under the overhang, a soft dribble of water picking a neat dimpled line in the stone further to his right. The forest wasn’t quiet at night, but Levi was. Hunter had never thought he’d miss the endless human noise of the Bunker, of home.

The moon was a slim cut line in the sky and the forest crackled, damp and waterlogged. A few birds sang desultory warbles that coughed in the dark.

“Anything?” he asked mostly to hear something familiar.

Levi was sprawled in the sandy space between Hunter and the open air of the forest around them. He was braced back on his palms, legs tossed in front of him and a messy jangle of knees and thighs. He didn’t react– he never did– face turned up to watch the shift and sway of the trees just past the safety of their camp. He looked at peace while Hunter was uncomfortably curled onto his side, head pillowed on his arm and shifting every few minutes to dig another large sharp rock from under him.

“Hey,” Hunter hissed, picking up one of the sharp pebbles and winging it at the back of Levi’s ridiculous hat.

Levi froze, chin ducking and jaw working under the scarf covering his mouth before he turned, twisting a sharply annoyed look over his shoulder. Hunter grinned brightly at him. In the dark, Hunter could see the bridge of his nose and the slight glimmer of silvery-white brows, lashes almost glowing in the scraps of moonlight. His eyes scooped a flicker of reflected light at Hunter, eerie and inhuman before a slow annoyed blink wiped them back to a slate gray.

“Yeah, hi there. Anything?” Hunter waggled a quick hello hand-sign before pointing out into the dark and wobbling his palm back and forth in the way Levi seemed to interpret as a question. He pointed at his own eyes with two fingers before flicking the gesture out into the dark cupped close and careful just under the canopy.

The response was quick. Levi mimicked the gesture, two pale fingertips glimmering at the edge of the frayed knit gloves pointing at his gray eyes before flicking back at Hunter before following it with a dismissive flick of fingers. He turned back around with a soft grunted breath that was loud enough to hear over the steady trickle from above. Hunter watched, affronted as Levi tugged the scarf from his mouth to highlight the quick poke of pale pink tongue, uncaring of the way his pale skin caught the feeble light as easily as Hunter’s hair had caught the misting rain earlier.

“Wow, rude, Levi. I was just asking. Damn.” He hunkered deeper into his coat and a low pout, frowning at where the other man was watching him with those strange eyes. He mimed a brief annoyed squawking face that Levi mirrored to with a snort and eyeroll. Hunter pointed a blunt finger at him. “Now you’re just being mean.”

Levi turned forward again, pulling his heels up and wrapping his arms around his shins, effectively ending the conversation. Hunter sighed and reached to grab his pack, pulling it under his head. They couldn’t risk a fire, not when the world shivered in the dark, the evenings going chilly and fickle. “It’s going to be fall soon,” he said, talking to himself and the high arching ceiling of the rock. “I’m not sure how far we’re going to make it, but we should probably start heading south. Not that you care, but I don’t know if I’ll survive a winter- a real one. I mean, it does get cold back home.”

He swallowed, throat going tight for a moment as he sipped his next inhale, careful around the way his lungs would strain.

“Don’t fidget,” his father had admonished, voice low and flat with disappointment as Hunter had shivered, skin pebbled and breath pluming into the long winter air- crisp and sharp where it cut into the bits of him that were exposed. Knox hadn’t snorted at him, but the implication always felt strong between them even as Parris would lean over and press against his side without needing to be asked. Hunter would wiggle his numb nose and keep his position, careful and patient in the dark.

“Yes, Sir,” he’d answer, keeping his fingers moving back and forth on the trigger in small little strokes. It kept the blood moving, kept his knuckles from locking even as he longed to be back in the bunker and buried under the pile of quilts he’d stolen over the years. Knox would just arch a thick black brow at him while Parris read.

Hunter would knock him down later and return the look with a smug smirk. He might be their father’s favorite, but Hunter was built broad and unforgiving.

“You think the trees will change colors? Think we might live to see it?” He glanced over at Levi’s back. Levi was tall and broad shouldered without the thick muscle Hunter had built blow by blow. He was narrow hipped and wiry with a square face, blunt nose, and wide set eyes. “Gonna have to find you some new clothes.”

They’d been forced together for three weeks when Hunter had spotted the wide broad building, windows shattered and the K hanging at an angle from where it had been riveted to the brick. The north side was tangled thick with a heavy green vine with wide broad leaves like the world had tossed a thick blanket over the parking lot and tucked the abandoned K-mart into sleep.

Levi had balked at the entrance, eyes wide in his open face. He’d been barely wearing what was left of the Garish skin. It was shredding a slow disintegration in the seams over his shoulders, along the lines of his chest and unravelling at the wrists. The back of his calves were ringed in mud, flaking and starting to smell worse than the heady sour scent of their sweat.

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2012 | Aaron Taylor Johnson for Bullett Magazine 😍

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by starlight