scotengweek

[scotengweek]

Old Fools Senior Husbands Sanctuary

Scoteng Week, Day 2: Punch drunk / “I think of you. Sometimes.”

Is this how hospitals contacting families and managing discharges work? Let's pretend it is, because it's how I writ it.

It's around 2k, so click the read more or see the full fic on ao3 here.

Again, I'm so sorry for attempting Alasdair's accent.

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“And I’m telling you, it’s a mistake. I shouldn’t have been on his Emergency Contact list. We’ve been divorced– well, separated, for almost five years.”

“Be that as it may, sir, if you are still legally married you are his next of kin. There’s no one else on the list. And he really shouldn't be left alone for at least 48 hours.”

Arthur bit his lips, looking at the scuffed surface of the hospital counter. “Can’t you keep him here? If you just feed and water him I’m sure he’ll be fine in a couple days…”

“This is a hospital sir, not a kennel.”

–🩹–

“Arthur!” his technically husband called from the bed, goofy smile smeared across his bruised face. “Sweetheart! Come to help me make my great escape?”

“Alasdair,” said Arthur, helplessly. For a moment he was frozen in the doorway, pinned straight through like a moth in a display case. Alasdair’s voice was so full of light and love, it flung him back in time a decade, held him under the flood of memories until he felt like he was drowning.

Alasdair's face was different though – eyes blackened, nose splinted and taped, gauze mostly covering a line of stitches across his forehead. There were more wrinkles around his eyes, and the patches of grey at his temples had grown. He was missing one of his front teeth, the little one next to the canine. Arthur couldn’t take his eyes off it, the empty space. He wished, absurdly, he could remember the name of that tooth.

“Why are you lookin like you’ve been stabbed, love? Ach, I can tell I haven’t been kissing on you enough. Come over here, I’ll fix it.” 

He closed his eyes, his throat tight. Would it be so bad to pretend? Just for a moment?

“They tell me you can’t remember much,” he said, instead. He walked over to stand at the foot of the bed, eyes on the plastic footboard. Alasdair’s chart hung over the edge. He picked it up and leafed through it, giving his helpless hands something to do. Phrases like traumatic brain injury and temporary neurological amnesia stared up at him. He quickly hung it back where it had been.

“Aye,” Alasdair said, unbothered. “And I'm still outta it. But I’ll either remember or I won’t, and that’s how it is. I’ll try not to be too much of a burden on ye, in the meantime.” He held up his still insultingly muscled arms and did grabby hands in his direction. “No kiss for me?” he asked, eyes pleading. 

“Not right now,” Arthur said, flushing despite himself. He made his way to the chair next to the bedside and sat down, tucking his legs in primly. He tried to ignore Alasdair’s kicked puppy gaze, dismissing the instinctive swell of guilt – it was for his own good. He clearly didn’t remember anything about the last time they had talked.

If he did, he would know better than to ask for a kiss. 

Alasdair watched him for a moment, furrow etched between his brows, then seemingly decided to table the kiss discussion for later. “Did they tell ye what happened to me?”

“They said they don’t know– someone just found you lying in the street, unresponsive. Probably a hit and run. They called for an ambulance, and the ambulance brought you here. Then the hospital called me.”

“Oh no– did that Bastard Johnson say anything about ye clocking out?”

Arthur had left that job at Mr. Bastard Johnson’s firm six months after Alasdair left. He'd started work at his new firm not long after. If they had anything to say about him taking off for the hospital in the middle of the day, he hadn’t heard it. He had barely even stopped to grab his coat and scarf on his way out the door.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Arthur asked, avoiding the question.

“Well. The nurses have asked me that about twenty times now, so I think I’ve got it down by now. This morning… I planted a kiss on yer sleepy forehead before I left. Ye grumbled and smacked me and called me a ‘curse laid upon ye by God for your sins’ so I had to go back and give ye an extra kiss, to ease yer suffering. Then I went out… to work? To… the shops? I don’t…” He trembled for a moment, passing a hand over his pursed mouth. “Then I woke up here.”

Arthur wished he could remember that specific morning, the feeling of Alasdai's lips, the warmth of their bed. That memory had long ago blended into the dozens and dozens of other mornings just like it, a well-worn path, each footprint indistinguishable from the others.

Alasdair had always risen with the dawn, usually leaving Arthur tucked warm under their pile of quilts. He'd go out for a smoke from the pack that he thought Arthur didn't know about, or fix something broken in the house, or get started on breakfast. Then he'd get too lonely or bored or hungry and would bully Arthur into waking up and eating something.

Arthur made himself focus. “What year do you think it is?”

“...I think whatever I say I’ll be wrong," Alasdair said with a helpless shrug.

“Well,” Arthur sighed, willing his tone flat. Reasonable. Calm. “The last time that morning could have happened would have been at least… six years ago? It’s 2024. You moved out in winter of 2017, and we haven’t talked since.”

“Wh… what?” Alasdair went paler than he had been, voice shaky. “Why?”

You'd know better than me, Arthur wanted to snap, but he held it in. Alasdair didn’t know, not right now. 

“Well. I think we just must have…grew apart. Gave up on each other."

"I… I can't remember."

Arthur remembered it all. Especially the night he'd come home late to a dark and empty house, envelope on the counter. He'd got roaring drunk that night to try and block it out, but all he got out of that was the worst hangover of his life and an inability to even look at whisky without gagging for months after.

He swallowed hard.

"I was busy a lot with work. Late nights, early mornings, overtime. You were working too, but just odd jobs. You'd been laid off, and were looking. Taking care of the house. Always trying to fix things. The place was a shithole."

"Aye, that it was," Alasdair said quietly.

"We fought sometimes. A lot. But we would always make up. Then we’d fight again. Then, I don’t know. I came home one night and you were sitting at the kitchen table, in the dark. And you said you wanted to talk. And that you were tired of fighting.”

Arthur paused for a moment, staring at the hospital linoleum. It was a hideous yellow green. Why would they have flooring that color in a hospital? It made him feel sick just to look at it.

“And so we talked. And fought, again. And, I don’t know. Yelled. There was a lot of yelling. And finally I said, I wished we had never married. And you said, fine, you fixed everything else around here, you’d fix that too. And that was it.”

Alasdair’s face had grown paler and paler as Arthur spoke, his expression closing off. He pulled his arms tight to himself, wincing a bit at the pull in his bandaged shoulder. 

"I thought you'd come back the next day, and we'd talk about it. But then you didn't. Or the next day. The day after that Sean called, said not to worry and you were staying with him. A couple weeks later, I came home and your stuff was gone. You'd moved out while I was at work. You left an envelope on the counter, with your ring in it. And that was that."

He looked up from the floor and their eyes met. Alasdair looked away first.

“Well,” Alasdair said at last, “I must have really fucked up, if that's what happened.”

“No. It was on both of us. We were too young.”

“...Yer over 40 now, if my math holds.”

“We were BOTH too young,” Arthur snapped, glaring daggers at Alasdair's answering ghost of a smirk. “And foolish.”

“Well, I don’t know if I’ve gotten any wiser since then. In fact, I bet I'm even more foolish, what with the thump I took.” He sighed. "I guess we're divorced then. I'm sorry, they shouldnae called ye–"

"N-no," Arthur said quietly. "We're. Still married."

"Wha'?" Alasdair stared frozen at him, a glimmer of light coming back into his eyes.

"Never sent you the paperwork. Never printed it off, or even went to a solicitor, I guess." Arthur looked away, suddenly shy. "I just kept waiting for you to come back home. And then you didn't. But… I couldn't. I put your ring away and got on with things. But. I still think about you. Sometimes." 

He closed his eyes, a humorless laugh slipping from his chest. "I guess even if I got older, I never grew out of being foolish either."

Alasdair looked at him for a long moment, grin slowly making a reappearance – still charming even with the missing tooth. "We could still have a chance to be two old fools together then. If ye wanted."

"We could," Arthur said quietly, tiny smile unfurling across his face like a new spring leaf. "If you wanted."

"Do ye think I could get that kiss then?" Alasdair said hopefully, holding out grabby hands again.

Arthur got to his feet and stood by the edge of the bed. Still, he couldn't bring himself to lean in. "What if," he started, then stopped.

"Yeah?"

"What if you remember why you left. And then leave again."

"Then we'll just have to rent a car for you to hit me with, and I'll come back to you again."

Arthur gave an ugly snort, caught off guard. 

"No but, sweetheart. I may not know what year it is–"

"I just told you, it's 2024–"

"Or my own address, but I know this. I missed ye. So much. Bone deep. And I wouldn't leave ye again if it killed me."

Arthur clenched his fists, then leaned in at last, pressing a kiss to the least bruised part of Alasdair's cheek. He inhaled, and under the scents of hospital and betadine and blood, Alasdair still smelled like himself. He smelled like home.

After too long a pause, Arthur made himself pull back.

"Let's get you discharged then," he said, straightening back up. "The nurses say you shouldn't be alone for at least 48 hours. You're going to have to stay at mine."

–🩹–

"Oh FUCK," Alasdair yelled, sitting bolt upright in bed.

"WAUGH," yelled Arthur, kicking and scrabbling at his quilt cocoon, knowing in his heart they were under attack and this was where he would meet his end.

"No– no, it's okay. Sorry. I just remembered everything," said Alasdair, shaking. "My brain came back online like someone turned the lights on in a dark room. Fuck me, I've been a fucken IDIOT."

"Always," Arthur said, willing his heart rate back down to a reasonable level. "But go on."

"Arthur. After I moved out, I kept waiting for YOUR call. I've been pining for ye daily. I've got an album of pictures I took of ye that I sometimes have a sad wank over."

"I'm honored," said Arthur, who definitely did not have a very similar album hastily hidden away in his hall closet.

"Also I remembered I owe Sean two hundred and thirty four quid."

"Hmm. Let's just pretend you didn't remember that part."

"Agreed."

And they went back to sleep.

♡ The End ♡

[scotengweek]

We are halfway through the week! There is still plenty of time to participate. Late submissions are welcome all of next week.

Be sure to tag your work or @ the archive so people can find it and have fun!

[scotengweek]

1999

The isles take a road trip (a little out-take from a nationverse AU. Set in the 90s.)

-

Alasdair finds him sitting on a dry stone wall, with his feet tucked into a gap where a stone must have come loose, and for a moment he feels human; younger and foolish and lighter with the promise of a short life. He might live to sixty-eight, or eighty,—a hundred on the promise of modern medicine, and from this moment to then he would have liked to think of Arthur like this, holding a bottle loosely between two fingers, eyes lost on the horizon. 

They are alone; ten minutes out from the main road where their car broke down and three hours away by foot from the closest farm. This far north and this close to summer they won’t see sundown until half past nine at best which leaves them five hours total to sort themselves out if they want to make the first ferry back to the mainland tomorrow. It leaves at quarter past, so they’ll have to be there at seven sharp if they want to leave in the morning or wait until the evening and by then they’ll have lost a full day. They have nowhere to be except for two rooms booked back in town to split between the four of them. Nothing to do either except to keep chasing half-forgotten stories from end to end, squinting against the glare of this decade to find familiar landscapes. They have all sensed it, an unease with the new millennium which looms ahead, still a year into the future but rearing to take them in the blink of an eye. Alasdair wonders if one day some scientist somewhere won’t discover one day that time has begun to collapse or that the Earth has been spinning faster, taking a week with it every year. Maybe he is just too old. Maybe whatever made them and gave them a body failed to consider that they could make it this far unchanging; an evolutionary disadvantage. 

Arthur doesn’t look back, but Alasdair knows he can hear the gravel announcing his every step over the din of the rolling waves this close to the coast. He’d walked away from the car, canvas rucksack in tow, something like an hour ago. Probably less, but then time flies when there is a good thing to argue and shout over each other about, so Alasdair cannot be sure. Arthur had the right idea of it, pilfering a case and coming out here to spot loons or seals or whatever it is he can see through the dense cluster of his lashes and the fall of his fringe. He’s due a haircut soon, though he started keeping it longer after the war.

He doesn’t ask if he’s welcome, just has a quick rummage to grab a bottle for himself and a fresh one for Arthur. He already tall enough and has the advantage of higher ground this side of the croft so he can step a leg over and sit on the wall with ease, even if his feet won’t touch the ground on the other side. He is also stiffer than he used to be, however, so swinging a thigh over so he’s not straddling stone is a little harder. Could have knocked Arthur clean off and have called it an accident; might have even meant it, with the way he finds it harder to gauge distance these days. 

He settles with a gust of an exhale and Arthur his pocket knife. Alasdair wedges it under the bottle cap and pops it, keeping both in hand and handing them back. Arthur snaps the knife closed and slips them both into his shirt pocket. 

“Are they heading out?” he asks.

“Daffyd is,” Alasdair snorts and has a sip. 

That gets Arthur to turn.

“Alone?”

“For the first quarter of, at least.” He shrugs. “Sean’ll be after him.”

Arthur hums; looks away and brings the bottle to his lips.

Alasdair You’ve been quiet all day.”

“Yeah?”

“Not in a bad way,” he clarifies. They’re both speaking low, close enough that they don’t have to raise their voices above the tide. “What’s on yer mind?”

“The house,” Arthur says, then pauses. Turns very subtly, and only for a moment, to look at Alasdair. “You.”

Alasdair doesn’t start but he does blink, leaning back like the movement would draw Arthur’s attention. 

“What about?”

It is Arthur’s turn to shrug. “I just do, sometimes.” 

Alasdair wants to repeat himself, caught off guard. “Why?” he asks instead.

Arthur does turn to look at him now, eyes a little squinted. Alasdair is half-backlit by the sun, but he thinks it’s more that Arthur is irked. 

Alasdair thinks he should say something but comes up short. He knows what Arthur means and would tell him, too, if he could, of just how he thinks of him.

Instead, they sit in silence, drinking and waiting on the sun, watching birds dive into the ocean.

[scotengweek]

For day 1 of Scoteng Week! I did write it on day 1 but I needed to gather courage to post

I attempted to write Scotland's accent. I'm sorry.

Prompt: Anger from worry / Inconvenient Attraction

Summary: A dialogue-only fic about a sexventure gone wrong between the lads, but it all comes out okay in the end. ♡

—

“Hold still ye fucken weapon. Almost… almost– uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh? What do you mean uh-oh?”

“It slipped again. I don't think this is workin, Arthur–”

“Shut it. Shut your mouth right now and get your fingers back in there and FIX this.”

“I’ve been trying! It’s not moving.”

“It will move! It will move!!!”

“I cannae even SEE it anymore…”

“It’s because you keep shoving it back in with your sausage fingers!! Give it a minute!”

“A minute? I’ve been four fingers deep in yer ass for near an hour and a half!”

"So you’re giving up already. After all you have done to me.”

“After all I've done to ye? Was I the one who came home from the sin shops with a new dildo in MY sustainable canvas shopping bag? Was I the one who laid a towel down on the sofa next to my fuckpal as he was TRYING to watch the footie, stripped down to my skin, stuck my bony chicken legs into the air, and said, in the exact tone of an exhausted cross-town bus driver, 'Turn off the telly and put your back to the plow, beast'?"

“You’re mocking me in my time of crisis. You have inflicted this hell upon me and I’m going to DIE like this and my tombstone will have YOUR FACE ETCHED UPON IT because you will have KILLED ME with your SAUSAGE FINGERS and MOCKED me on my DEATHBED-”

“Ye said ye wanted to stay on the sofa… didye want me to move you to the bed?”

“NO! When this is over you’re going to be sleeping on this couch for the rest of your LIFE, you giant OX-”

“So yer lying on my deathbed then.”

“I can’t believe this. I'm going to die because of your perversions and you're refusing to take my suffering seriously–”

“MY perversions??? That's rich. That's rich!”

"What? You're the one who got so enthusiastic about sticking it to me that the flared base slipped in!”

"YOU SHOULDNAE BOUGHT ONE WITH SUCH WEE BOLLOCKS! USELESS!"

"IT WAS ON SALE! NO ONE ASKED YOU TO GET THAT ENTHUSIASTIC!"

“YE WERE INTO IT!!! YE WERE INTO IT!!!”

“AND NOW IT’S IN ME AND WE’RE BOTH FUCKED!”

"CALM DOWN AND STOP CLENCHING-"

"DON’T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN!! I'M CALM! I'M UNCLENCHED!"

“JUST BREATHE!"

"YOU BREATHE! IT'S PRACTICALLY POKING ME IN MY LUNG!"

"OKAY!! Okay. Okay. Arthur… I think it might be time to consider alternative options.”

“We are NOT going to the A&E.”

“Oh, agreed.”

“Wh- you wouldn’t take me to the A&E?”

“I would! Do ye wanna go? Let’s fucken go!”

“No! You know ours is a teaching hospital! I REFUSE to have a gaggle of med students gather around my deathbed and stare into the depths of my fundament with their greasy, judgy, born post-2000 faces! YOU'RE the one who INSISTED on basting me like a Sunday roast-”

“Ye said ya LIKED the slipperiness of the new lube!!"

"-and now look where your decisions have brought us."

"We're getting off track. Arthur, listen to me. There's one thing we haven't tried yet."

"OH and you were saving it for a rainy day? A special occasion? The diamond jubilee?"

"I got up to four in you."

"I'm WELL AWARE-"

"What if. Five."

"..."

"Now hear me out-"

"Your hands are the size of garden trowels-"

"-I could get a better grip-"

"-and you want to rummage around in me and pluck it out like the last crisp in the bag? I've SEEN the poor crisp bags after you're done having your way with them-"

"-pull it right out, and then we'll worry nae more about it."

"-shredded! Like a fox went through the bins!"

"It's either this or the med students."

"..."

"..."

"You'll go slow."

"Slow as ye please."

"And you'll stop when I say."

"Aye, the very moment."

"Christ alive. Fine. Fine. Get in me."

"Alrigh', let me lube up–"

"TO YOUR FOREARM?"

"I've been staring into your asshole for almost two hours. I'm doin what I gotta do here. Alright, I'm goin in."

"FUCKING HELL don't START with four!"

"It's fine, look, they slid right in. There we go. And, breathe in-"

"Ugh–"

"Alrigh', just hold it there, keep breathing, you're doing so well–"

"Hah…hah… huff…"

"That's it. That's it. I'm gonna tuck my thumb in now, just keep breathing–"

"Christ–!"

"Don' tense up on me now! Easy, easy, let me in– oh."

"Alasdair…"

"Oh, sweetheart, I'm in ye. I'm all in. I can feel your heartbeat around me. Yer holding me so tight, yer burning up inside…"

"Wha… the fuck– are you getting hard right now?"

"I cannae help it, you're so open and soft and clenching so tight on me, maybe don't do tha'–"

"BECAUSE YOUR HAND IS UP MY ASS! Let me put my hand up your ass and see if you clench, you insufferable bastard!'

"God, I love ye."

"Wha...did you seriously– HOW DARE THE FIRST TIME YOU SAY THAT BE WHEN YOUR HAND IS UP MY ASS! I demand a do-over!!!"

"Every day, sweetheart, as much as ye like. Just a little deeper, let me in…

"Haa… haa…"

"Oh- I've found the end of it! Hold on now, you're doing so well, don't clench– I got it… I got it, hold on!"

"Guh- BE GENTLE!!"

"Sorry, sorry. Ok. Ok I've got a good grip. Gonnae gently draw it out. Breathe in–"

"Hah, hah… ha-ah!"

"Here it comes, breathe–"

"Alasdair– GAH!"

"It's out! It's out!"

"Haah…"

"I don't see any blood, I think yer alright. You're still open a little–"

"Dont look… -hic- don't– -sniff-"

"It's alright. It's alright. Just let it out. C'mere, lemme hold ye."

"-Sniff- No, you don't have to…"

"Ow, fuck, fucken elbows like scythes– there."

"I hate you."

"It's alright. I love ye."

"I…love you, too. Unfortunately."

"My condolences."

♡　The End　♡

[scotengweek]

Albatross

Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning. Red sky at night, sailor's delight.

Arthur is a sailing instructor and Alasdair is a local marine carpenter who likes taking his smoke breaks on the pier. There is an accident.

-

He doesn’t think twice and wouldn’t have had the chance to change his mind even if he had tried. One hand on the forestay, one foot on the gunwale, only barely; moving so quickly that he loses his sandals and cuts a gash across his knee on something and does not feel it. His life vest is upstairs, dry and hanging from a coat rack in the office. Arthur had left it there this morning, a radio clipped to his hip, and said to their admin, Michelle, that he’d missed the sunrise by an hour, his phone dead and unplugged, silent between his matress and the headboard.

She’d shown him a picture she’d taken on her way to work that morning, the harbour crowned in crimson so deep it looked like dusk.

Arthur has worked at the sailing centre every summer-to- fall for the last three years and in that time, they’ve had a fair share of accidents. Only a handful of major injuries, including three concussions. Arthur has never been involved in any; the worst he’s ever had have been blisters, rope burn, bruises that bled green across his skin and healed over a week. Usually he’s one of a pair playing rescue, confident enough in what they’re doing that they have never had to call in the rescue service. They have two dinghies that they use to herd in their youngest students and chase after their racers, heavy enough that they whip against the waves as they cut through the contrails of the commercial vessels that dock further down the coast, where the strips of piers give way to industrial docking. They can tow students and stranded tourists in no trouble. On slow days, if they have enough gas to spare, Arthur takes the larger of the two on joy rides, packing in his youngest students like sardines and riding waves out to the cove to make them squeal.

The first thing he does most days when he clocks in is pick up the keys from Michelle. Only this morning he was late, so he’d arrived to find he keys gone, and their storage half-cleared of equipment, boats by order of size and the age of their crew lined up on the slipway already. Arthur had waved as they set off, dry and tasked with putting together reams of lesson plans and patching up the hull of their oldest Vaurien instead of shouting orders against the wind. His kids had waved back, smiles wide, and during his lunch break he’d come to see them back into port, letting them recount the hours they’d spent drilling short manoeuvres like while they sorted their lines and pulled their boats up over the tideline for a couple hours, waiting out the worst of the sun and giving them all a chance to rest. The forecast

(Arthur had been mindful, then, of the eyes on him, watching from the railing overlooking the public slipway the centre uses. In the three years Arthur has worked here they have talked properly maybe twice, enough at least that Arthur to know his name. Alasdair.

He works a trade, somewhere on the coastline, and runs a shop right across the street, keeping hours during the height of tourist season and watching over the centre like a disgruntled gull. He smokes sometimes, and the parents complain when they catch him at it, like there is anything the centre can do. Arthur is sure that if it didn’t require him walking up the office to Michelle, Alasdair would file as many complaints about them. It’s not rare that they have an audience and Alasdair is as good as a dock-cleat by now. He greats Arthur with a nod, if at all, eyes dark and set under the seemingly permanent burrow of his brow. He makes Arthur feel clumsy with his silence and hot in the face when he has to walk past him. Last summer Arthur thought he saw him sitting by the bar of his once-favourite pub and was so absurdly, inexplicably shy that he’d walked right out the way he came and spent the rest of the summer sober.)

So, Alasdair had been there at midday, rolling his tobacco with a filter between his lips and catching Arthur’s eyes. Arthur had walked past him on his way back to the office, and had considered (briefly, briefly) stopping on his way up the slipway, right below where Alasdair stood. He almost had, hesitating for a moment before picking up the pace and filling in quickly for another instructor. It’s just that he hadn’t known what to say and had felt in that split second that it would have been worse to trip over his words than walk away. Alasdair would be back tomorrow, or if not then next week. Next month, before the season ended, or next year. Time enough for Arthur to find something clever to say. Alasdair would be there, forearms resting on the railing, his hair whipping in the wind. There would be time.

It is strange, but it’s the last thing Arthur thinks of before he hits the water. Alasdair’s hands and the weight of his attention.

-

In Alasdair’s opinion, he’s the best they’ve got.

He has lived and worked by the water his entire life, coming and going with the seasons since their small town turned from trade to tourism some twelve years ago, now. In that time, he has watched the marina grow from salt-rot to fresh planks on the boardwalks. Late last spring whoever is in charge of things like gave the iron railways in fresh black coat, glossy and cool to the touch. There is no chipping rust off with his thumb anymore, eyes lost on the horizon. Maybe in a year or two the paint will wear, and the iron will flake again, eroded by the sand and salt that blow into the bay.

The children like the railings that run from the sailing centre down to the promenade leading into town. They hang off them, chasing gulls and waving out the smaller fishing boats when they set out in the morning. Alasdair is not much better, coming down here with a pouch of tobacco he should quit on and a faint excuse.

It’s not that Alasdair comes down to see him; he’d been coming down to smoke and watch the boats for longer than he’d care to remember and would continue to do so long after the lad moved on, as he would inevitably. He’s southern and pale and leaves every autumn with some warmth leeched into his skin, stark tan lines on his shoulders from his life vest and the uniform shirt he wears beneath it. The first time Alasdair had seen him had been his first day at the centre; couldn’t have been older than twenty-and-some, tripping over his own feet like he hadn’t expected Alasdair to turn to look at him when he did. Alasdair isn’t sure why he had, truth be told but since then he’s had a hard time looking away.

Alasdair has seen him head out in one of the sleek racers, late in the afternoon. He’s also been around to watch him tow wrecked boats in a few times. What’s more is the children like him; the older ones try to impress him. He’s good with them, the right amount of involved and patient with them. None of them seem to notice how he keeps out of the way with the rest of the instructors, subtly awkward in a way the weans can’t pick up, not like Alasdair has. They look at him with, with poorly-disguised awe and make up in heads who they expect him to be and will remember fondly come autumn. Summer gold and brave.

In this too, Alasdair is not much better.

The old radio he keeps on the counter tunes into the forecast. Around half past, he half-pays attention to talk of a windstorm and resolves to pack up for the day. This time of the summer anyone who needs him already knows where to find him and he has an early start tomorrow working on a luger someone’s towing in from Balliemore. It’s late enough that the fleets will be turning in, clearing the horizon for the larger commercial vessels and making way for the last ferries to dock before dusk. The centre will have gotten word on the windspeed, and he is half expecting that he will walk past to find the slipway cleared already. Turns out he is half right.

From across the street the view is half obscured but Alasdair can see enough to know that something is wrong before he hears shouting and the splitting crash of metal. Arthur is already sprinting from the centre, faster than Alasdair has even seen, and it must be bad, if even from a distance Alasdair can make out the fear in the clench of his jaw.

He is running after him before he even realises he’s made the choice to.

It still happens too fast. Later the girl from the office, Michelle, will tell him it started when two of Arthur’s students, anxious and off-kilter, had lost control of their boat. The instructor in charge of them had left them to it, only realising too late that with the wind coming at the speed it was, and with another three boats, there was no getting the dinghy in between them. They had crashed, first into another Vaurien, mast to mast, and then into the side of the slipway. That’s when Alasdair had spotted Arthur running blind down when one of his students had screamed his name. Alasdair had missed him jumping onto the boat closest to the slipway, line in hand to lock it in place while another instructor and two of the parents waiting rushed to his aid. He had managed to get a hold of the second boat, somehow, and grab onto the forestay to keep it close enough for the kids to climb from one boat to another and into their parents’ waiting arms.

That might have been it; some injuries, Arthur’s bleeding knee and bruises on the weans, and damage to the hulls of both ships. But in the panic and rush to bring the boats in, the instructor on the motor boat had turned in at full speed, missing a turn and ramming into the boats and Arthur, who’d been standing on the gunwale.

Alasdair had watched it happen without slowing his pace, feet slipping on the wet stone of the ramp. The mast had tipped, giving under the strain of Arthur’s weight and the impact of the dinghy on its hull. Arthur had gone under between the boats, silent under the audible fracture of one of the hulls when the boats knocked together again. Alasdair had felt sick, the whole useless lot of them frozen in terror as they all realised that Arthur might have drowned then, knocked unconscious by the impact or killed by the blow outright.

The children had been rushed away, adults crowding near the top of the ramp where Michelle was shouting to make herself heard over the wind, directing people away and screaming someone’s name. No one tries to stop Alasdair when he scrambles onto the dinghy, soaked up to the thighs and reaching shoulder deep into the water while someone holds on to his trousers to keep him in the boat, all in a mad dash to push the boats out of the way as best they could, clearing the space to try and catch sight of Arthur under the surface. The second dinghy wouldn’t dare come close and risk Arthur under the sharp blades of its propeller.

When Alasdair feels skin and then fabric under the surface he makes a strangled sound and pulls up, desperate and hopeful.

Arthur coughs, half limp in Alasdair’s grip once he realises that someone has him and knowing in some dormant way that struggling now would do more harm than good. Already he can feel his shoulders starting to shake, reedy tremors from deep in his muscles which come from the adrenaline crash. He kicks against the side of one of the boats to help Alasdair bring him into the dinghy and only realises then that it’s him who’s got him, broad and panting almost as hard as he is, still trying to catch his breath. Rather than let him go, Alasdair goes from gripping his side to the front of his shirt, letting him settle and spit saltwater while keeping him at arms-length.

His nose and his ears hurt. He’d hit the water so hard he lost half the breath in his lungs and held onto the rest out of instinctual desperation. He had let his body sink out of shock, feeling the temperature drop with every inch he lost to the depths, eyes stinging and set firmly on the last refraction of light under the surface. The crashing boats miss him by a handspan and even then, he does not recall feeling afraid; only a sense of stillness. He remembers thinking that if he’d been wearing his life vest he would have stayed afloat and that would have been it. But he wasn’t, and so he slipped deeper, eyes to the sky, and only started kicking up when a silver of light had come back into view.

On the boat, now, he is barely aware that someone is talking. Speaking to him, harsh and loud and shaking his shoulders. Arthur blinks saltwater away from his eyes and blinks up at Alasdair like he is seeing him for the first time. Looking up like he had earlier, from the slope of the slipway up to where he’d been standing on the gangway.

Alasdair cannot help his anger; the way it hardens his voice and makes him grip Arthur tight. He is vaguely aware of the other instructor in the dinghy, so he turns to him as well, calls him an imbecile worse than Arthur for having caused this god-forsaken mess in the first place. He would have cursed them both out hoarse if it weren’t for Arthur hand just then, reaching to up to grip his forearm where it is still crowding Arthur in close to his body.

“Thank you,” he says, working hard to collapse his breathe and release the tension from his body, eyes falling to half-mast and back coming to rest in the cradle of Alasdair’s body.

Sitting on the floor like he is, he can tip his forehead against his own knee, so he does, feeling for the first time in his life something like motion sickness. Alasdair letting go of his shirt feels like coming unmoored, but it is only for a moment. Alasdair puts his hand on his arm, squeezing gently and murmuring something that gets lost under the wind and the breaking waves but feels reassuring nonetheless. Arthur still has a hold of his forearm and does not even think of letting go. They breathe in tandem with the rocking of the boat beneath them and Arthur shivers. Alasdair presses closer and when Michelle runs down the slipway, a clean, dry fleece jacket in hand he reaches out to grab it and wraps it around Arthur before helping him to his feet and back onto land.

He sticks around. Some of the parents approach them to thank Arthur and shake his hand; a few others have concerns they want addressed and Michelle quickly steps in to lead them away. Some of the children cry, frightened. A handful of the older crew disguise their worry under banter but linger until they see Arthur standing with his freshly bandaged knee and then offer him a ninety-nine from the ice cream truck that rounds the pier every day at five. Arthur accepts, awkward and tired and mindful of the fact that they are watching him. Alasdair doesn’t get any ice cream but does get one more glare in when the second instructor comes to apologise with a few of Arthur’s other colleagues, who slap them both on the back.

When Arthur goes to collect his things Alasdair is still there, standing in his wet boots and his damp jeans. Arthur stays in town and offers his shower and tea. Despite the fact that Alasdair’s home is closer, he accepts, and they walk in silence.

Dusk comes late in the summer and bleeds gold-red. Alasdair’s clothes smell like Arthur’s detergent, and his skin like the bar of soap in his shower. Arthur’s temple smells clean and his hair is softer than Alasdair would have thought. He brushes a kiss there before he goes and can’t place the scent that lingers on his nose after. He sleeps deeply that night and wakes up thinking of something sharp and sweet.

He greets dawn on the deck of the luger, a smattering of clouds in the sky tinged gold in the first hours of the day.

(Lingering by the fenced boardwalk, a figure watches him work, lazy and listless, forecasting mild winds and clear skies; waiting patiently for midday when Alasdair might be tempted to step away and take his Saturday easy and slow. They have time.)

[scotengweek]

Quick reminder that the week is starting soon! You can find all prompts pinned to the top of this blog.

Some people asked last year and I personally could use some time to develop a couple of stories so remember late submissions are welcome after the first week!

[scotengweek]

Is this only for canon scotland or is the old pixiv!scotland also allowed. I like both, but the pixiv version is a guilty pleasure.

both! All Scotlands welcome.

[scotengweek]

[scotengweek]

Thank you everyone who participated! I’ll be keeping an eye out this week for late submissions. If you haven’t yet I’d encourage you to share and comment on the art, moodboards, and fic shared for the event as well as encourage your fellow creators.

Until next time xx

[scotengweek]

All out mistakes, every decision, every thought, every fight, led us here to this place. Where my anger turns into peace, where my nightmares turn into dreams, where the last crumbling remains of my shattered sense of self-preservation turn into dust when I'm in a head-rush induced by your lips. So tell me, why is it that only when I shiver and my skin bruises under the rope you have woven around my body to keep me tied that I feel truly FREE.

ScotEng week. Day 7. NSFW.

[scotengweek]

Last day (officially) of the week! Mind that today’s submissions will be NSF(t)W so be mindful where you’re logging in to see the great contributions coming up. All content will be tagged ‘nsft’.

[scotengweek]

The Restless

For day five of ScotEng week!

Horror // betrayal, ghost, forgotten // “Stay here.”

[This here was inspired by my mad chase across the grassland as something chased me in the night some years ago now in Hoy. You can find more informations on bothies, a cost-free shelter offered across Scotland, and their history here. This is my most esoteric entry by far. Enjoy! ]

-------

The camper is driving away.

Arthur is running as fast as his legs can take it, feet punching the ground and slipping on gravel in a mad dash to safety. He catches himself when he trips and pushes forward, the burn of his torn hands muted against the burn in his lungs as he struggles to catch his breath. His mind is blank. He does not let himself feel the terror biting at his heels in any conscious way, running on instinct and adrenaline. He yells after them, words or maybe a shapeless howl, begging against hope that the camper will stop, that it will turn, brakes squealing, to let him on. To wait for him. Some small part of him had thought that they would wait regardless of what he said. If I am not back in fifteen minutes, go. It had been the right thing to say. The only thing to say. They had all been afraid and still, bodies going into different stages of shock. Arthur had helped the rest of his friends load an unconscious Francis onto the backseat and offered to be the one to go looking for Alfred because it had been the right thing to say and do. And he had made them promise that they would go without him because he thought, he had truly and honestly thought—

It had only taken him ten minutes. He had gone searching and came back in ten minutes, not fifteen, because he had found Alfred’s torch thrown to the side and correctly assumed that he’d made it back to camp. Ten minutes.

The camper had already taken off in a cloud of dust, growing smaller in the distance, fading into the dark.

When he trips again his knees take the brunt and his thighs go numb. He thinks that he should scream, shout after the friends leaving him behind but there is not an ounce of air left in him, all of it burnt up in his lungs. The inertia of the fall knocks him on his front and some childish instinct has him tuck his hands into fists, so the ground rips up his forearms instead. It hurts less. It should not be possible from this distance, but he thinks he can see Francis, awake, banging on the back window. He would not have left Arthur behind. Francis would have made them wait. Francis would have pulled him into the van by the elbows and let Arthur catch his breath against his chest.

Arthur presses his forehead to the ground and chokes on a sob.

They should have known something was wrong when they arrived in the early afternoon to find the roads unkempt, not a soul for miles. They had only known to look for the bothy in the first place because they had overheard a local on the ferry whispering about the maintenance work it had needed to bring the roof down without collapsing the walls. The surrounding fields were used for cattle and it was a liability, having a structure that could come down at any moment and had no standing fence to keep the perimeter clear. All they had taken away from that overhead conversation had been clear skies and empty fields; cliffs and white sands and even ground for wild camping. What they should have heard was ‘danger’.

It had been beautiful at first. The flatlands of the isle gave way to the open cliffsides and the endless blue of the ocean and the north-eastern coast. They pitched their tents by the surviving stone wall, where they would be sheltered by the wind, and took their gas stoves and flasks to the waterfront. Arthur had thought then that it would be one of the dearest memories, their laughter that evening by the sea watching the sun set.

The whiskey had left him restless though and while the others crashed in shared tents and sleeping bags he had paced the perimeter of the ruins. The night was so clear this far north, so close to a perpetual twilight, that he had been able to navigate in the dark without a torch. He’d found smooth river stones piled into a miniature cairn some meters away from camp. Following the outcrop that gave way to the coast he’d found old fire pits and a witch stone, placed carefully by the edge like its owner had found it and left it there, intending to return. Arthur had not thought much of it and feeling something like kismet had rolled the stone between his fingers before looking through the gap; first at the ocean, then the grasslands.

It was through the stone that he had first seen it.

With a frightened gasp he had wrenched the stone away from his eye, blinking wildly and reaching clumsily for his phone. In truth, he had not needed any light to see that there had been nothing there. No looming figure, dark against the faint blue-grey of the skyline. Heart racing and clutching his stone, Arthur had hurried back to camp, looking over his shoulder with every flutter of birds’ wings in the brush and the faraway bleating of sheep. He had felt safe laying down to sleep next to Francis, though, and foolish when he’d retold the story the next morning over breakfast.

Then he found the bones. Vertebrae too large to belong to sheep, cluttering a freshly dug trench.

He had called out to the others, voice tight with alarm, but they had laughed it up. Alfred had kicked one of the bones carelessly and brushed fresh dirt onto the pile to cover them, so they would be out of sight. He’d seen the like in Texas, he’d said, dismissive and care-free. It could be a cow, a horse. And maybe he had been right, Arthur wouldn’t know, but a chilling suspicion had begun to dawn in the back of his mind. The ground had been undisturbed the night before.

They were not alone. And they were being watched.

He should have forced the issue instead of biting his tongue. He should have ruined the fucking trip. Ripped the tents with his pocket knife if that was what it took. They should have left before nightfall.

Shaking with adrenaline, Arthur slaps his hands against his mouth and forces himself to breathe through his nose. He shifts on his bruised knees and looks around wildly, looking for somewhere to hide. Keeping an eye for him and then he spots him. A shadow between shadows moving pitilessly closer at an even pace. Arthur can barely hear the howling wind over the pounding of his heart but he blinks the tears away and thinks fast. There is the road ahead, endless and exposed. He can’t outrun the night; his lungs will give out before he makes another mile. If he runs now, he will disturb the gravel and call attention to himself. For now, at least he is crouched down, holding himself as tight as he can to make himself seem small. From a distance he might be just small enough to be overlooked. Judging by the direction the shadow moves, he might just walk past him. God, if only he would walk past him, Arthur could make a run for the coastline. He could find a crevice between the weathered walls and sea-washed boulders until the sun rose. In the light of day he could find his phone, still plugged into its power bank back at camp. He could call for help. Walk up the road until he finds service and dial every number in his directory, dial emergency services. He will not be made a ghost haunting the friends that left him for dead. He will not be remembered for being forgotten. Arthur wants to live. 

The shadow pauses, its profile looking out towards the winding road, and for a soaring moment Arthur is sure that it will turn and go. Everyone else is gone, Francis who he had attacked. Alfred who he had lured away in an ill-advised fit of courage. They are all gone. There is no reason for it to suspect that Arthur has been left behind. 

The shadow turns its head and although Arthur cannot see his eyes he simply knows.

It can see him.

Arthur scrambles up to his feet and stumbles, blind with panic, until he can find his footing. Pain shoots through every muscle and joint as he tries to outrun the inevitable. In his desperation he turns towards the bothy, some animal sense in him promising him safety if only he can get behind the stone walls. Clearing the distance takes an inhuman amount of effort but he makes it, lurching past the empty door frame and reaching unseeing for something to block the entrance. There isn’t even a door, the wood long-rotted, but whatever Arthur can do to earn himself another heartbeat he will try. His hand closes around the back of a wooden chair and using the inertia of his failing body he tosses it behind him. Arthur throws his back against the far wall of the small cabin and  watches the wood bounce on the threshold. His lungs wheeze as he pants widely, afraid to blink for too long.

Earlier in the night they had set up lanterns on the cabin’s walls, where the roof would have been thatched onto the structure once. It had dispelled the shadows then and made them feel deceptively safe so long as they stayed within the pools of light. All they do is cast long shadows now as Arthur waits, terrified, for the looming figure to come. 

When it does, it kicks the chair across the room, clearing the threshold and stepping through unhurriedly. Arthur’s finger’s scratch the walls and low shelves behind him, searching desperately for something to use against the hulking shadow he is finally close enough to see.

He is a man, or must have been, once, dressed in a stained undershirt and muddy trousers. A boned mask obscures his features, a savage mimicry of a wolf or bear that tilts to the side as the man seems to consider him. If he came any closer the light might slip into the eye sockets of his mask but as it is all Arthur can see of them are the pooled shadows of an eyeless skull peering meaningly from between strands of unkempt hair. He is easily twice Arthur’s size in padded muscle alone and towers above him in height.

Arthur’s fingers find a thin shard of rock worked loose from the wall behind him and he holds onto it tight despite the pain. He blinks away the black spots that fill his vision.

“Why?” He demands, blinking away the black spots that swirl in his vision.

“Who are you? Why– what do you want?”

The man does not answer. He takes a step forward. 

Arthur could chance him coming closer but a sudden fury bubbles in his chest at the thought of this hulking man crowing him. He lunges at him, seemingly managing to catch him by surprise enough that he gets a good hit in with his shoulder. The shard in his hand splits in two under the strain of his grip alone so Arthur throws it blindly hoping one of the pieces will find the man’s eye behind his mask. The stranger recovers quickly though, bending over with a grunt and reaching around Arthur to get him in a corded grip. With his hands now free, however, Arthur can claw at him, looking for an opportunity to jab an elbow against his neck or face. When the man manages to catch his arms, he kicks. When he is pushed against the wall, he cranes his head and bites down. He is savage with it and in a triumphant moment earns a howl of pain when his teeth pierce the man’s skin. Blood floods his mouth however and he chokes, spitting the metallic taste and battling against the nausea that conjures hot bile up his throat. He is still spitting when the man regains the upper hand and lets go of one of his arms to grab a solid grip of his hair by the roots instead.

All Arthur knows after that is a sharp pain at the back of his head and then, nothing.

Nothing at all.

-

He wakes up curled up on his side, his cheek pressed down on a rough-hewn mattress that smells like peat. His head throbs but when he tries to reach up to his nape he finds that they are caught on a snare. The rope is not tight enough to grind down on his bones but it keeps his wrists crossed and anchored to the bed frame. He has to crane his head back to find where it’s been strapped and nailed down to the wood. Barely awake, he does not have the wherewithal to be frightened yet but when something grips his ankle his wits snap back into attention. 

His first instinct is to start kicking but his legs are pulled out harshly and pinned. There is not enough give to the rope around his wrists to accommodate him being yanked down so his shoulders are pulled forward, his field of vision obscured by his own forearms. The mattress shifts with the man’s weight and Arthur really panics then, bucking his hips up and twisting. He only stops when strong hands bracket his hips. It is the shock, at first, and then the knees that dig in firmly into the insides of his thighs, keeping him still as the man leans over him to grab wrists in a single hand. 

His heart is in his throat, mind racing with a million possibilities. He tries to pull his arms down to at least be able to look at the man on top of him but even his best effort is pointless. He had known as soon as he had seen him that he’d ne outweighed and outmatched but the reality of that body on his blinds him to reason. Arthur curses and bites back the urge to scream, only settling down when the man above him growls angrily and pins his turned face into the mattress with the weight of his forearm. He has gotten wise to the sharpness of Arthur’s teeth, it seems.

Angry tears smear into his temple and the stranger’s dirt-streaked skin as Arthur pants to keep his emotion at bay. He will not cry, he will not beg. He bites his lips and swallows the hitch in his breath, unwilling to give up the last torn shred of his pride. There is nothing Arthur needs to make peace with except himself so on and on, he curses until his voice gives out, too hoarse to continue. It is only then that the weight above him shifts, like the man crouched above him was only waiting for Arthur to tire himself out. He reaches for something Arthur cannot see, still blinded by his own arms, and the only weakness he allows himself is turning his face against his shoulder, bracing for whatever may come. 

All that happens is that something cold is pressed onto his palms.

He flinches, startled and hisses when his skin begins to burn but the man seems to have had enough. He hushes him harshly and squeezes his wrists to keep him still before dabbing roughly at the scrapes on his palms. Once he is seemingly satisfied with the work he’s done he moves to clean Arthur’s forearms next.

It is an action so absurd that Arthur’s is shocked to stillness. He lets his arms be raised and lowered without fighting and drops his head back to catch a sight of the bed frame once more, wondering if he is still asleep or half-dead already and hallucinating as he goes. The sharp scent of herbs bites at his nose and his fingers curl when some kind of salve is slathered on his palms.

The man slips down his body when he is done, clumsy and heavy, but for now not trying to hurt him. He goes as far as to ease his weight of Arthur when he winces and for now seems to trust that Arthur will not try to knee him when he shifts his knees off his thighs. It is enough leeway for Arthur to feel like he can risk provoking his temper so he pulls himself back up the mattress, using the rope to hoist himself back. He is stopped from going too far when the man grabs a hold of his ankle again like a warning but he is able to sit up at least and finally regain his sight.

Absurdly, the first thing he thinks is that the man’s eyes are the same shade of green as his.

His shoulder is clean and wrapped. Arthur does not know whether the mark of his teeth will scar but he imagines it might, for a while at least. Good. Good, Arthur hopes it does. He can see some bruising starting to form around the area. He is wearing a different undershirt, this one looser on his frame, but the same soot-stained trousers as he had been earlier. His feet, Like Arthur’s now, are bare. More importantly though, so is his face. He has the same stern features that Arthur has seen on the men who work the docks and pubs of the northernmost isles. It should not be right that he looks like them, or they like him, but the truth is that Arthur should not be surprised. He has known violence and fear at the hands of so many men who looked like this: ordinary, handsome even. It is almost disappointing that this is how it will end. It is a fucking waste.

The man does not hold his gaze for long, seeming more concerned with the hem of Arthur’s trousers. He does not let Arthur pull his legs away but does not pull them straight and splayed either. He lets Arthur keep his legs slightly bent while he rolls up the fabric up to his knees. Arthur is too tired to feel demeaned. It hurts to have the material pried out from the grooves in his torn knees and he can’t help flinching again. This time, the man only presses his thumb to the joint of his knee, like he means to hold him steady. 

Arthur is exhausted. He is shaking with crashing adrenaline and his ears are ringing from how hard he is clenching his jaw. Maybe from how hard the man bashed his head, as well. That the same man is now carefully cleaning his knees is so absurd that he feels hysterical laughter bubble up in his chest, breathy and hoarse. The man only looks up briefly before resuming his task. When he is done, he stands from the bed and reaches immediately for the mask that Arthur can see now has been sitting on a low table all this time. 

Arthur speaks without meaning to. “Why?”

The man pauses, half-turned. He is holding the mask against his face with one hand, the other reaching back to tie the leather tongs that hold it in place. Looking at him now, golden in the half light, Arthur realises that there is a small fire lit in an iron stove across the room and gas lamps sitting in every corner of the room. 

“What is the point?” He pulls his legs closer to his chest; his thighs are starting to burn from the night’s exertion. He means the man’s touch on his skin and the care for his wounds. Minor, for all that there might be in store for him. 

The man does not answer. He adjusts his mask and when he turns to face Arthur it’s with the same animal blankness he had exuded as he cornered him in the bothy. 

Has it been hours? A day? Arthur suspects the former. He is not hungry, only thirsty.

The man goes around the bed to approach him this time rather than climbing in the mattress the way Arthur had expected he would. He crouches by him, so large that it is only in this way that they are finally at eye level. Arthur holds his eyes, obscured by the deep set cavities of the skull, and holds his ground. He does not so much as flinch then the man’s hand comes up to touch his face, tracing his jaw with a calloused knuckle. He does not tilt his head, just follows the natural curvature of the bone towards his chin. Arthur is so focused on the slow drag of the caress that he does not notice the way the man’s breathing shifts, slowing down into deep, controlled breaths that fill his diaphragm with air. A deep, rumbling voice hums a singular note before he speaks, the words barely given shape behind the bone which distorts them further. It is not Gaelic or Scots of any kind that Arthur has heard but they ring into his ears like tide; rhythmic and familiar. 

Arthur is not aware of the way his defiant gaze softens, only of the way the pain at the back of his head seems to melt away, leaving only a light, tired throb behind. He feels his muscles yield to exhaustion and the pull of those dark, sightless eyes. Something hot and consuming pools in the pit of his stomach.

When he loses consciousness this time it is not sudden, but gradual. His head is cradled kindly and his body is laid out. 

Dawn crests, unseen, and Arthur dreams of cliffs and the howling winds of Orkney, a voice hidden in their midst.

-

They are told that Arthur drowned. Not one of them believes it.

After a thoughtless drive across the island to flee the horrors of the night, Francis had managed to scream sense back into them. With a fraction of diesel left in the tank, however, making the drive back to camp had been impossible. They’d had to wait until the morning after contacting the ferry operator on an emergency radio left by the docks. The search for Arthur had been fruitless. They returned to the mainland with Arthur’s phone still hooked to a power bank and missing a friend. Francis didn’t look away from the island once as they were escorted away. He also has not spoken a word to a single one of them since.

The official reports will read like a common tragedy: too little sleep and too much to drink, a prank or fight gone awry with one young man left behind. With Arthur’s phone found abandoned by the rest of his things and Gil’s phone missing, the theory had been born that he must have climbed onto a cliff edge trying to find reception and had fallen to his death, body lost to the ocean. The ferry operator, some local workmen who had joined in on the search,and the women who had leveled them with pity and censure on their return deflected their questions and refused them help in proving that there had been someone else there; a man. It is some time before the nightmares fade and the guilt settles into something they can live with. Arthur is brought up rarely and only as a memory. 

Until one day, the ferry dispatch on the mainland receives a mayday signal from an emergency radio long in disuse.

[scotengweek]

SCOTENG WEEK - day 6 (historical)

i just wanted to draw teen ali and little artie

[scotengweek]

SCOTENG WEEK - day 5 (horror)

honestly i just wanted to draw some gore... anyway this piece is about love and devotion <3

[scotengweek]

The Glasgow Scale

For day three of ScotEng week!

Tragedy // loss, strangers, cigarettes // “We always see it too late.”

[Two strangers meet in the waiting room of the A&E. cw assumed/referenced suicide and medical settings.

Here is some more information about the Glasgow Coma Scale]

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The back of Arthur’s neck feels clammy.

He is not sure how his hands feel other than numb. Most of him is, all but for the way his skin feels stretched out and tight over the canvas of his bones. Someone had told him once that shock felt like falling feet first into freezing water; a seizing of the body and a sensation like asphyxia. Arthur can breathe though, so he does. In and out, he is, if anything, overly aware of the rise and fall of his chest. His lungs are the only real part of him left.

The waiting area hums with the quiet chatter, a steady flow of patients and staff coming and going in the background. Phones ring at intervals, voices over the intercom drone in codes, and the linoleum floors betray the material of people’s shoes. Every so often a voice is raised or a siren wails but in the end it is all drowned out into white noise. Arthur makes no effort to move or listen, caught listless and alone and beyond any help.

Time dilates; he isn’t sure how long it has been when a man sits next to him. Arthur barely notices him there until their arms brush and the stranger speaks.

“Do you have a filter?”

Arthur does, and slowly, blinking away the sore dryness in his eyes, he comes back to himself. Wordlessly he reaches into the inner lining of his coat and pulls out a beaten pack of filter tips. The man takes it and the first thing Arthur really notices about him are his hands. The second are his shoes.

A lone woman sits across from them, empty seats at either side of her, one of them a small table-width apart. It does not occur to Arthur that the stranger could have sat there instead of cramming himself into the narrow joint seat to Arthur’s left. He is broad all over and deceptively thick around the knuckles for how carefully he handles the rolling paper and tobacco between his fingers. There is a faint residue of ink in the whorls of his fingerprints, like he’s been booked although you would not think so by the look of him, not at first glance. The brogues on his feet are worn-in but freshly polished and the wool of his kilt is pressed into perfect pleats. His shirt is the only thing that looks worse for wear with the sleeves shoved up his forearms instead of folded and stained with something that soaked in and dried out in blotchy patterns. Whiskey, maybe, or rum; even vaguely concussed still Arthur can smell it on him. Stale alcohol and sweat.

His thoughts blur again and he feels vaguely nauseous. The thought that he might throw up is a muted concern but his face feels hot. He shuts his eyes against the sudden inertia he feels becoming aware of how stiffly he is holding his body. He should find a bathroom and wash his face. He should gulp down a bottle of water even if he cannot keep it down. 

Something knocks gently against his arm and even if the nausea does not abate the feeling like freefall does for long enough that he can turn his head without feeling dizzy. His eyes fall on a hand-rolled cigarette and a beaten carton of filters, held towards him between two fingers. 

“For the filter,” the stranger explains. 

Arthur takes it without thanking him and the next thing he knows they are standing in the cold, the light of a streetlight pooling under their feet. The hospital from a distance is only concrete and glass. The harsh fluorescent lights are blurred by a drizzle so light that it sits on the exposed skin of his wrists and on his cheekbones like mist. The stranger who chose to sit beside Arthur only looks at him from the corner of his eye and the rim of his eyelashes by turns, taciturn and unobtrusive. 

“Alasdair.” He offers his name without a lead and promptly focused on the fag between his lips, cupping the flame of his lighter and breathing in the first drag like it’s water and he’s parched.

Arthur takes the lighter when it’s offered and fiddles with the flint for long enough that Alasdair reaches out to light his cigarette for him. He breathes in the smoke and lets it sit in his mouth long enough for Alasdair to step back before exhaling.

“Arthur.”

He sounds rough. On his next drag he tries to swallow the smoke and exhales in a coughing fit.

Alasdair waits it out, taking slow drags and letting the smoke slip from his lips and nose with practiced ease.

“You're not a smoker.” His voice is low and rolls deep with the tilt of his accent.

Arthur’s eyes water.

“No,” he agrees with one last hitch before his breathing settles.  

He brings the filter back to his lips.

The cherry’s gone out. Alasdair relights the ashen tip and levels a quiet instruction. Slow and deep. When Arthur exhales it is good and steady despite the itch in his throat. 

They smoke in silence until the minutes are ash on the ground and they toss the butt ends into a metal-grid bin. 

“I’m trying to quit.”

It is an empty confession. It bears no weight on his opinion on the man or Arthur’s choices. Looking at him, though, Arthur can believe it. 

He should say something. Thank you, at the least, but his mouth is wet and tastes like newspaper curling in the fireplace. His face and hands feel foreign and some part of him asks what the man standing with him sees; if he can tell that Arthur is only half-present, some part of him gone and lost in the halls of the hospital looming at their backs. Even now he cannot tell whether he is losing time and awareness of space again or if they have really been standing outside for as long as he feels they have. At least here he feels cold and he shivers with it the way only a living thing can. 

Alasdair feels comfortable enough in his shirtsleeves and he is close again, only a pace away from Arthur. He reaches up to touch his own stubbled jaw with a knuckle.

“You have blood, here.” His eyes are very intent. Arthur can’t tell their colour in the half-light. 

He reaches up to mirror Alasdair’s reach and feels for the spot in the dark. His hand comes away wet and lightly stained. There is not a lot of it. It must have dried in the hours he has spent sitting in the waiting room with no one to point it out to him. The rain and his fingers smear it away. The collar of his shirt must be stained.

“Who are you waiting for?”

It is not the kind of question you ask of a stranger.

“No one,” Arthur answers with the kind of honesty you spare a stranger. “He is dead.”

“Family?”

“My brother.”

Alasdair hums. 

“You should go home.”

“I live in Kent.” Arthur blinks hard and tries to refocus his eyes when his vision mists over. He is not crying, it is only that his eyes are so very sore.

“That’s six hours by train,” Arthur explains like it means anything.

“Visiting, then?”

“Yeah.”

“He wasn’t expecting you.”

“No.” Arthur tries to remember what Rhys had said to him over the phone the last time they spoke. Whether he sounded angry or sad. He can’t recall, suddenly, and he thinks that will haunt him for the rest of his life. “No he wasn’t expecting me.” 

“Do you need to make arrangements?”

Arthur shakes his head. 

Dai left instructions.

Alasdair shifts his jaw like he is carefully considering his next words but in the end all he does is nod. “Ok.” 

He looks like he wants another cigarette. Dai used to rub his thumb against his pointer finger whenever he got a craving, the same way Alasdair is doing now. Arthur wonders if this is the kind of thing the people who love you notice and see mirrored in strangers once you are gone. He thinks he will be seeing Dai again but only in these small gestures, done by strangers, and his chest feels hollow.

“I’m…” Alasdair glances away. “I need to get home. If you need somewhere to spend the night…” He leaves the thought unfinished and shakes his head absent-mindedly. He does not strike Arthur as someone used to uncertainty. ”You shouldn’t stay here.”

Arthur would have to be completely out of his mind to accept his offer and he is, so he does. “Ok.”

Arthur packed some clothes and a book into a rucksack before riding north. He had also dallied by the closet before leaving for the station, second-guessing whether he should bring his winter coat or a parka with him, knowing Scotland would be all rain and high winds. Now his clothes and his coat lie on the floor of Dai’s hallway, dropped carelessly after he let himself in with the spare set of keys his brother had left with him the last time he’d come to see him in Kent. All he has are his wallet and his brother’s denim jacket, snatched from the coat rack at the last possible second as he rushed as he rushed to catch up with the emergency team trying to stabilise his brother on the landing. It is fleece-lined and worn in, and it smells like coffee. Dai had been working as a barista. Arthur will have to call his workplace in the morning and let them know that he is not coming in to work.

Alasdair tells him to wait by the door and comes back some indeterminate amount of time later with a sheath of paper and a coat Arthur had not noticed on him. He nods towards the parking lot and Arthur follows after him, calm and dazed and feeling more awake now. It is not until they are sitting in Alasdair’s car, a mud-splattered Mazda, that he asks. “Who were you there for?”

Alasdair’s mirrors are set for someone else’s height. He has to twist his waist, elbow against the backrest of his seat, to back up from the narrow parking spot.

“My brother,” he says, and offers nothing more. Arthur looks at the blurring light through the passenger window and does not pry. 

The drive through the city is quiet and winds down as they cross from well-lit streets into the stillness of Leith. Alasdair’s flat is a sandstone tenement with weathered walls. He parks a street away and lets Arthur climb up the stairs ahead of him, silent and steady. There is one bedroom and a bathtub built into the wall of the bathroom. The lightbulb in the living room is missing and there is a pile of folded laundry on the living room couch, some more hung to dry by the cold radiator. It does not smell like Alasdair smokes indoors and the kitchen is clean aside from the dishes stacked in the sink. Alasdair pours them both tea, dark and hot, despite the lateness of the hour and offers Arthur a pair of sweatpants from the laundry pile and the first shower. When Arthur comes out of the bathroom twenty minutes later, damp and red-eyed, he finds Alasdair sitting listless on the couch, staring at the ceiling like there is an answer in the empty socket and the light he hasn’t gotten around to replacing. 

The couch is not wide enough to host a sleeping adult for the night and they are both too tired for pretense. Arthur takes the left side of Alasdair’s bed and falls asleep almost as soon as his head hits the pillow, lulled by the breathing of the stranger beside him and the unassuming warmth of his body. 

They sleep in past midday and wake up comfortable in each other’s space, aware that the other is awake but unwilling to leave the bed and its comforts. Alasdair sighs tiredly into his pillow; Arthur cannot see his face but they are so close that he can feel the way his body seizes, like he is bracing himself for the day or balancing on a knife’s edge. Men like Alasdair, Arthur has learnt, are deceptively strong. It makes them seem prone to anger and incapable of sorrow. 

Pressing himself to Alasdair’s back is no more inappropriate than inviting a stranger into your bed in a daze of grief. They are past the discomfort of overt over-familiarity. The tip of Arthur’s nose is cold and fits neatly into the crook of his shoulder. Alasdair’s sobs are silent and bitten-back. He breathes through his nose like he is not used to crying and only seems to catch his breath when Arthur’s hand finds the soft curve of his stomach over the cotton of his shirt. Arthur holds him without judgment and takes comfort in his heartbeat as it slows and steadies to match his. He keeps holding him long after that.

There is no awkward pause when Alasdair finally slips free from his hold to sit up in bed. Arthur just shifts to join him and then sits across from him in the kitchen to share burnt toast and tea like they have known each other for longer than a night. The ink has washed off of Alasdair’s hands and Arthur’s feel warm wrapped around the ceramic of a kitschy mug. They drive to the hospital and Arthur listens from the corner of the room as the story of Alasdair’s family unfolds in raised voices and accusations. Curious eyes in now familiar shades of hazel fall on him but his presence goes unexplained. Alasdair stands at arm’s reach from him when the shouting is done and offers no apologies or justifications. Arthur does not expect them and simply keeps him company, waiting in the hallway while Alasdair makes his peace with a man who shares his nose and the set of his brow and might never wake again. They find coffee and food in the late afternoon, and idle by a park until Arthur rallies the wherewithal to walk up the street to his brother’s flat to face the aftermath of his loss. He does not trade in his brother’s jacket for his own despite the early morning chill when they are finally ready to leave, Arthur’s rucksack in tow; he’s warm enough with Alasdair’s jumper tucked under the denim.

On his third morning imposing Arthur offers to leave which Alasdair dismisses with a grunt and a half-cooked argument under his breath. After that, Arthur does not bring it up again and for the rest of the week, while he settles Dai’s affairs, he shares his bed and does his share of the work around the house despite Alasdair's coarse insistence that he doesn’t have to. Arthur does not try to argue and just carries the laundry into the bedroom rather than leaving it to pile up in the living room. He cooks them at least two square meals when he has a mind to and lets himself sink into Alasdair’s bed in the early afternoon when the grief bears on him so heavy that he feels like he’ll never be able to breathe normally again. Alasdair comes home early once and finds him like that. Wordlessly, he sits on the edge of the bed and only after Arthur shifts does he reach down to bury his fingers in his hair. Some evenings they watch movies, others they spend apart. Alasdair rolls cigarettes out of habit, to scratch the itch, and leaves them by the windowsill to grow stale.

Life carries on. Slowly, unremarkably. Arthur hides his smiles and is slow to laugh until something settles in him and he can think of Dai without feeling the ground sway beneath his feet. Alasdair’s brother wakes up in gradual starts and in a year’s time relearns the words he needs to credit himself for his brother’s ease. Arthur graduates and chases jobs and slots his favourite books into Alasdair’s shelves. Alasdair makes space for them and space for his clothes in the closet and keeps him close at night in the bed they share.

Life carries on.

[scotengweek]

for @scotengweek - day ¾ (cigarettes + longing). i could only find time to do something super rough but i wanted to contribute anyway ♥

[scotengweek]

SCOTENG WEEK - day 3 (tragedy) (THE RIGHT ONE THIS TIME)

when you have a heart to heart with the little brother youve been abusing and exploiting for all his life and then realize that actually maybe you fucked him up for good