death-and-desires - Tumblr blog

[death-and-desires]

if it sucks hit da bricks <- litany against sunk cost

take it easy but take it <- litany against burnout/apathy cycle

fuck it we ball <- litany against perfectionism

now say something beautiful and true <- litany against irony poisoning

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I love u narrative songs 💖💖💖

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[death-and-desires]

i'm moving soon, and it got me curious. If you wanna say, how old are you and how many times have you moved so far in your life?

bc i'm 29 and i'm about to move for the 14th time 🥴

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Feed my uquiz addiction

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Don’t worry, us L fans definitely exist! A is a close second for me, but L has the added advantage of having Lars to aid me in my teasing! Love your work so far and am eagerly awaiting future updates! Sending love ❤️❤️

Thank you so much!

Lars is awesome. He's the type of older brother who'd tease their siblings to the ends of the earth and back again, but if anybody dared to hurt them... well... I just hope you can run, real, damn, fast.

\/\/ The day his dads handed Lars his baby brother or sister for the first time \/\/ 😄

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CHEEK or CARRY with Nash?😳

The freighter shifts, lurches as though trying to throw you off. You fall, stumbling down the slope to the wall, and where you slap a gauntleted hand on the window, cracks spiderweb across the glass. The world beyond burns, dust swirling in an infernal vortex in the wake of the ship.

You take a breath, the air filters in your helmet whirring, and brace yourself. Just as you catch your balance, plant one foot on the 45-degree angle of the floor and the window, the freighter shifts again, tilts. Throws you like a loose pebble, head over shoulders across the floor with a roar of twisting metal. You drag yourself up slowly, braced against another lurch, and shake your head.

> Are we good?

> The ship’s stabilisers appear to have gone offline.

> No shit.

There’s a clatter from across the room. You whip around, baton raised, and find yourself staring into Nash’s blank visor, murky orange light staining the surfaces of their armour. They turn their head, taking in the chaos you’d so cheerfully wrought just moments ago. Bodies are strewn across the floor, tumbled into limp piles by the ship’s lurching, and the electric baton in your hand is all but glowing, still smoking slightly.

“Everything alright?”

Their voice crackles, distorted by the radio and thick with dust. You spin the baton in your hand, feel it whirring through the air, and flash them a grin they can’t see. Compensating for the frown you can’t see through the muddy orange of their visor.

“Peachy. ‘Cept for the ship rolling around.”

“Yeah,” Nash takes a step towards you, sheathing their own baton. “You do that?”

“Not deliberately. IVI reckons the stabilisers have gone offline.”

“Billion-dollar AI in your head and that’s all she can tell you?”

“Don’t be bitter.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

> Don’t let them get to you, IVI.

> Only as much as you do, Operative.

> Shut up.

Shaking your head - ignoring the tingle of electricity down your fingers, a gentle nudge from IVI that you’re not sure how to decipher - you glance at the window. The freighter’s crawling along, barely a mile off the ground, now, a huge, bloated carcass leaving a trail of oil and dust in its wake. Outside, the air is thick and grainy, orange-red dulling to a burning brown desert below.

At least it’s mostly upright.

“So.” You spin your baton again. “How long do we have?”

“‘Bout fifteen minutes before scheduled landing.”

> Thirteen minutes, forty-three seconds.

“Thirteen minutes,” you correct automatically. Nash turns their head to you, the blank glow of their visor conveying absolutely nothing.

“Don’t be petty.”

> Yeah, IVI. Don’t be petty.

“We should get off the ship. Did you-”

They’re interrupted by a low rumble, so deep it barely registers at first. Something hisses, right in the bowels of the ship, and you barely have time to reach out - grab for the nearest thing to support yourself, which just happens to be Nash’s shoulder. And then the ship capsizes, and you’re falling.

You hit the glass hard, curling away from the impact that shudders through your armour. There’s a cracking sound, a groaning, and though it doesn’t shatter - spilling you out into the scorched desert below - you can see the pale cracks that stretch out across the window, feel the steel scaffold grinding under your weight. Nash is sprawled out a few feet from you, their hand torn from yours in the fall. As you watch, they turn their head, moving slowly, painfully. Their hands splay out on the glass, and as they realise where they are, they freeze.

The glass cracks. More splinters, ever-smaller, jagged shapes drawn in the thick window.

Nash raises their head, and you follow the blank orange stare of their visor upwards. Up, to where the maintenance walkway’s been snapped, twisted, one jagged edge stretching down towards you. Nash looks at you, at where you’re climbing gingerly to your feet. The glass beneath you groans.

“If that falls-” you cut yourself off. Don’t need to say the rest. Nash glances up, back to you, and shrugs. The glass under their feet cracks a little more.

“If the glass breaks…”

You bite your lip, sinking your teeth in until your mouth is flooded with metal. “Fine. Can you reach it?”

They shift, gingerly extend one arm. Their gloved fingertips brush the metal. They rock up their toes, curl a hand around the railing - and the ship shudders. They stumble, lose their grip; you fall too, hands landing on their chest as the two of you freeze. Beneath you, the window creaks. There’s a crunch as another crack spreads out, white threads like blood in water, spiralling out from the epicentre.

From the spot the two of you are holding one another.

The desert below looks very far away.

“Right,” you say, then: “Fuck.”

“Yep.” Nash sounds strained. In the back of your skull, IVI is a nervous hum, a slow-building static that does nothing to help with the way your heart is pounding.

“Can you try again?”

“Then what? Pull you up one-handed?”

“Doesn’t sound like a bad idea.” Your armour scrapes against theirs as they shift, carefully adjusting their stance to follow your finger as you point. “What about those cables? Can we use them?”

“Right, yeah. Let’s tie ourselves to the burning ship.”

“It’s just a suggestion.”

“What if it falls?”

You shrug, fingers tingling as IVI’s anxiety ratchets up. “We die?”

Nash considers that for a second. Then they nod. “Alright. Sounds good. Think you can reach them if I give you a boost?”

> No.

“Definitely.”

Nash nods. The glass beneath you is sagging, caving in, and you think it must be a matter of minutes before it collapses. They’re too slow, too careful, as they hunker down, letting you brace one booted foot on their thigh. Slide their hands around your waist.

“On three?”

“Yep. Three-”

The glass beneath you screeches. Instinctively, you push, springing off them into the air. Nash’s hands go tight around your waist, boosting you up - you swing out a hand, too wild, too wide - and your fingers close over the cable. You’re swung into the edge of the walkway, manage to get an arm around the railing and loop the cable around your wrist. You stretch out a hand, reaching for Nash.

As you do - as they reach back, caught in the centre of a great pale spiderweb of glass, shattering in slow-motion - there’s a crunch. A hiss.

Dust fills the air, as a shard of glass falls away into the oblivion below. You open your mouth, inhale a mouthful of sand and grit as the air filters on your helmet are overwhelmed. What you’d intended as an order - Jump! - comes out as a weak cough, your whole body jerking.

Through the dust in the air, you can see Nash brace, tense - and leap, hurling themself from the cracking, splintering glass.

Their hand catches yours, armoured gauntlets locking together. The servos in your armour grind together, dust catching in your joints as you brace, gasping. You swing, their weight and momentum slamming you sideways into the scaffold you’re clinging to. It’s enough for them to get a grip on the railing with their left hand, ease some of the weight.

They don’t let go of your hand.

The window is crumbling, glass falling away in huge, jagged shards. The freighter is moving slow enough, now, that you can make out individual rocks in the wasteland below.

Nash’s exhale is shaky in your ear, loud enough for the radio to pick it up.

“Damn.”

“Yeah.” Your arm is starting to ache, your fingers cramping. “So… now what?”

[death-and-desires]

forehead with mc and lea perhaps?

[FOREHEAD] - sender feels receiver's forehead.

You're having a nightmare. You can tell - you're aware of it, but you can't do anything about it. You're forced to play through the scene, cold water lapping at your waist, your hands and feet gone painfully numb as your whole body shivers violently.

You can feel the collar around your throat, rubbing your skin raw, the metal biting at your numb hands as you try to pull it free. Chains weigh you down, gradually pulling you deeper, the water rising agonizingly slow.

You've had this nightmare before - you know how it ends.

That fact doesn't stop you from waking up in a panic, grabbing at your throat, gasping and thrashing in your bedroll before you come to your senses.

You wake Lea up, too, your knee digging into their back as you struggle to throw the blankets off of yourself, hitting them more than once in your frantic state until they grab at your shoulders and say your name.

The touch - and their voice - jars you out of it, leaving you dazed, breathing hard, your hands gripping Lea's arms uncomfortably tight.

"You're alright," they're saying, and you swallow hard, the taste of saltwater still burning in the back of your throat.

"S-sorry," you blurt, but Lea just lifts their hand to gently brush your cheek, pushing your hair out of your face, their other hand moving to cup the back of your neck. They urge you forward, and you let them, leaning into them as they press their forehead to yours.

"You're alright," they say again, the words ghosting over your lips, and you breathe them in, clutching at the front of their shirt, turning your head to tuck your face into the crook of their neck.

They wrap their arms around you then, leaning back into the blankets, holding you against their chest. You close your eyes, still gripping their shirt like a lifeline, feeling the steady beat of their heart against the panicked racing of your own.

It takes a while for you to fully calm down, and Lea holds you all the while, pulling the blankets up around you and urging you to go back to sleep. You don't - you can't - but you still stay like that, not wanting to leave Lea's arms until morning.

[death-and-desires]

👀preview of a ch6 scene (neutered for spoilers)

Keep reading

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Illustrated Albums #2 - Halsey’s Hopeless Fountain Kingdom

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my brother in christ wtf did i like 😳

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[death-and-desires]

I Loved My Friend - Langston Hughes // As It Was - Harry Styles // @shhhitsfine // I Built a Friend - Alec Benjamin // @fairycosmos // It’s Not The Same Anymore - Rex Orange County // Snow and Dirty Rain - Richard Siken // Supercut - Lorde // War of the Foxes - Richard Siken // @incendavery // The Glass Essay - Anne Carson // It’s Not The Same Anymore - Rex Orange County // @adampvrrish // The Sea - John Banville

[death-and-desires]

blorbo prototype quiz. here's your blorbo

hi do you want to know who is your comfort character. there are seven results i promise they are fun

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succession (2018–) cr. jesse armstrong / arcane (2021–) cr. christian linke & alex yee / euphoria (2019–) cr. sam levinson / the fall of the house of usher, steven berkoff / antigone, jean anouilh (trans. lewis galantiere) / a brother named gethsemane, natalie diaz / a flicker in the dark, stacy willingham / gone girl (2014) dir. david fincher / avatar: the last airbender (2005–2008) cr. michael dante dimartino & bryan konietzko / filmnoirsbian / to all the boys i’ve loved before, jenny han / clara ortega / the umbrella academy (2019–) cr. steve blackman / where things come back, john corey whaley / the pull of you, the national / little women (2019) dir. greta gerwig / jazmine hughes / antigonick, trans. anne carson / statue of vincet and theo van gogh, ossip zadkine / ‘blues for vincent’ otherwise known as the human condition, geoff dyer

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happy birthday old man

[redraw of x]

[death-and-desires]

heyo! new uquiz :) how do strangers perceive you? there are six results, all positive & one lyric question (with a skip option). pls pls take it