#(interactions) joe I’M A BAD BAD MORMON

[tckeonme-blog]

JOE HAS MOVED!!! If you want to continue interacting with ORGAZMO, please head on over to @notorgazmo​ ..... don’t let the URL fool you. anywho, that’s where i’ll be a lot for a while! i’ve just got all the joe feels. pls follow~ or don’t~ ok

[turn-it-off-5s]

ZELDER THAT IS A LOT OF SIBLINGS !!!

Zelder : YES!! And I'm going to tell you about each and every one of them!

Zelder: First up is Noel ! She's 12 and the youngest in the family. Mom says she's going through a bit of a "phase" at the moment but- I guess it's a healthy way of expressing herself ? But anyway, she's great at singing and won quite a few talent shows despite being super shy and, as most of my siblings are, she's great on the farm! She mostly helps with the planting when she's not busy with homework. Oh and I may or may not have cried when she was born. In my defense she was the cutest baby ever. (still kinda is)

Zelder : Next is Philippe. He's 13 and sadly going through this horrible phase of teenage hood where everything is terrible, awkward and. Very sweaty. Hang in there buddy. I heard he spends a lot more time in his room playing video games now but he does have some sort of connection with cows- not in a bad way obviously, the cows really love him is all ! Dad keeps sending me pictures of him stuck in a field because of a cow napping on him. Dad thinks it's absolutely hilarious

Zelder: Oh Bertie!!! I love her- she's 15 and insanely talented! We spent a lot of time watching cartoons together and she kept drawing the characters so now she is an amazing artist! She wants to be an animator so my parents are trying to save up money to send her to a good art school once she's done with high school. She's also very funny and nice and not as shy as you'd expect her to be, I love spending time with her whenever I can!

Zelder : Woop woop! Give it up for the twins! (I'm sorry I don't know what I tried to do here oh gosh) Caroline and Alexis ! Both are 17 but Caroline was born 20 minutes earlier and won't let him live it down. These two are like cats and dogs : Caroline has always been this very extroverted, bright and childish girl while Alexis is much more introverted, calm and- no offense Alex if you're reading this but- terrible at any sort of social interaction. He's very different from the rest of the family but I do like that about him ! Oh and the twins are both Very very strong, I'm sure they could lift a truck if they wanted to!

Next in the family is me so- hi ! Yall already know me so let's move on to...

Zelder : woah I'm surprised I never talked to yall about him before! Okay- no joke but his name is Micheal and he's 20. Yes we do make a lot of jokes about him and Micheals having the same name and my parents would go around at church telling people about their two sons named Micheal or that they should make a group called "The Micheals" since they're both musicians- it was actually very cute~ Anyhow! He's a Mormon like the rest of the family but he decided to not go on his mission to focus on his music career. He's a singer and guitarist! He's got a few songs out which I listen to a lot and my parents try to drag Philippe and Noel to every single one of his concerts. I hope I'll be able to see him play soon!

Zelder: Oooh Jacqueline~ She's 21 and almost done with her mission in Switzerland! We haven't gotten to talk to her a lot since her mission started but let's just say she's doing way better at it than I am (her district is still standing and now that I'm thinking about it, it's not a very high standard...).

Growing up with her she was always really relaxed and chill, she's great at handling other people's tantrums and giving vague yet good advice. She has the same "older sibling vibes" as Davis so I really appreciate having this little piece of home around. Also she has a huge collection of crystals back home and a Kidz Bop mixtape she made for us when we were kids! I miss her a lot ❤️

Zelder : This is Charlotte! She's 26 and recently got married to a man she met on her mission in France. They're both in America right now but they're saving up money to go live in Paris. It's very slow since she's a French teacher in a little high school in Texas but she's very hard working and determined to make her dreams come true so I'm sure she can do it ! What else... Oh right. We used to get into a lot of arguments about everything when we were younger but I still cried when she left to go on her mission... And at her wedding... But I can finally say now that I love her a lot and I know deep down I cared for her back then... She will definitely be using this to blackmail me later. Oh gosh...

Zelder: And finally we have Joseph (we all call him Joe), the oldest at 29 years old ! We are honestly all so proud of him since he dealt with a lot of of problems with his mental health and yknow it was... A lot. But now look at him ! He used to love baking pies with mom and now he has a lovely pie shop in the city, he has an amazing wife and the cutest daughter, his recovery is going so well and he's a wonderful person ! He also spent a lot of time elder Micheals (not my brother) at the worst of his depression, which helped a lot since I didn't always know how to help him and he was there for me too when I wasn't doing too well either. The three of us are really close ! It's amazing to see him now as an adult, he's so wise and so much happier. Things really do get better and I couldn't be more proud of my big brother.

[elfnerdherder]

The Fault in My Code: Ch. 14

You can read Chapter 14 on Ao3 Here

Chapter 14: One Eye Green, One Black With Grief

           Will wanted to see Chilton, but at the doors to the hospital, he couldn’t. It wasn’t so much the sight of his foul, awful skin or the smell of antiseptic laced with dead flesh; Will knew those things, expected those things. Perhaps it was the decidedly pungent absence of guilt when he thought of what he’d done, what he told himself he’d inadvertently done.

           He hadn’t been much of a liar before Lecter, but he was certainly one now.

           Instead, he found himself at a small funeral service for Matthew Brown, huddled at the back of the group in a wrinkled suit with a tie whose knot was close to choking him. It’d been the coincidences of coincidences, if he was being honest. Pacing outside of the BSHCI, he overheard two orderlies getting off shift talking about it, deciding pointedly that no matter how much the guy hadn’t deserved ‘getting offed like that’, they wouldn’t go to the funeral of someone that’d conspired with Hannibal Lecter. He’d left his contacts at the hotel when he went.

Matthew didn’t have much family –a mother, a younger brother and a few acquaintances. Will had hoped his presence would go unnoticed, an unfamiliar face in a large crowd, but the size of the service was enough that he stuck out like a mismatched, unfamiliar thumb.

           He didn’t sit in on the actual funeral; he lingered outside and focused on the tactile feel of index finger meeting index finger, middle finger meeting middle finger, ring finger meeting ring finger, and so on until they were pressed against one another, like he could scrape his fingerprints off by sheer force. He rode the wave of his hangover with a grumpy awareness of his surroundings, the feeling of the dead too close to him for comfort. Organ notes wafted out of the church. Will wondered if Abel Gideon was out of solitary yet.

           When it came time for the burial, that is when he was noticed, oddball that he was. The mother and brother cast looks, first curious then uncomfortable. The brother was the one confidant enough to approach him. He walked over the spongy grass and stared at the hideous concoction that was Will’s tie.

           “Did you know Matthew?” he asked. His voice wavered, but his back was rigid. The man of the house. The one to care for those left behind.

           “Yes.”

           “Who are you?” he pressed –more of a demand than a question.

           “Will Graham.”

           He didn’t expect a reaction, but he got one. There was a shifting expression, one of surprise then dismay, and he grasped Will’s forearm before he could think to draw away, his matching eyes fixated on his face. He had to have been no more than twenty or so.

           “Are you? Are you, really?”

           Will gently extracted himself from the boy’s grasp, tugging at the knot of the tie. He really was horrible at them –clip-ons were the best in a pinch although Molly used to throw away any he bought.

           “He said we’d never meet you, but you…come on, come on,” the boy coaxed, and Will found himself standing up at the front, studying the gloss and sleekly elegant design of Matthew Brown’s final resting place.

           “Mom, this is Will Graham. It’s Will Graham,” the boy emphasized.

           Her expression was polite disinterest, followed by a bleak shift as the cracks of her veneer revealed a distraught pain. She looked at him from head to toe, and he wondered if that is when the hit would land –he figured he’d allow her to slap him, if she wanted. Once, though. No more than once.

           He stiffened when she threw her arms around him, hugged him tight like he could hold her cracks together. She looked to his face, eyes dry, and she reached up to touch him, much like a mother would. The way he thought maybe a mother would.

           “I never thought I’d meet you,” she whispered, and there was such genuine conviction that Will had to physically pull away from her, her love a waxy coating that made his skin feel dirty.

           “I’m sorry,” he said, and it wasn’t right but it was all he had.

           “He hoarded you away, much like he hoarded his life away,” she said like he hadn’t spoken, like he hadn’t cringed out of her embrace. “Only a half-connection, but he said you bore it so well.”

           “What?”

           “The relationship. You lost your soulmate, he found some part of his.” At his stricken, stunned expression, her face softened. Polite disinterest became maternal instinct. “I’m sorry, this isn’t…this isn’t how we wanted to meet you. I’m Matthew’s mother.”

           “I know,” Will said slowly. Out of the peripheral of gazing at her chin, he saw one green eye, much like Matthew’s had been, and one black as a jet stone in sunlight.

           “This is Mark, but I’m sure you knew that. He said he’d showed you pictures, but he’d only ever showed us one picture of you. In profile, you looked so serious. I didn’t recognize you.”

           Will’s mind turned, reeled. He thought of distant interactions, uneven steps that didn’t quite match with his, a shadow in the background that wasn’t tangible, shifted unseen. He was unseen because he’d wanted to be unseen.

           That didn’t mean he had to be that way with his family, though.

           “I’m sorry,” he said again, and he was Matthew’s lover of three and a half years, a half-connection but one he bore so very well.

           “I told him that place would just kill him one day,” she said sadly. “He said you hated it, too, him being there.”

           “I did.”

           “Do you have family, Will? Are you…are you doing okay?”

           Will swallowed heavily in the wake of her worries. He wondered if his own mother would have sounded so concerned if he’d died and Hannibal had shown up to the funeral, lurking at the back with a badly knotted tie. If Bill Graham would have been able to find her to even let her know Will had died. “I’m trying,” he managed to gasp out.

           He decided that Hannibal wouldn’t have allowed himself to have a badly knotted tie. He’d have a freshly pressed suit, something plaid like the one he’d been wearing when he was arrested.

           “He said you were a person of few words,” Matthew’s mother admitted. “I can see it, but I think it suited him just fine.”

           “Do you really catch killers? He said you caught killers,” his brother, Mark, declared.

           “I’m trying to.” His throat was dry. He needed a drink.

           “They have the one that got him, and that’s what matters,” she said. “I didn’t understand what he was taken there for, what he was even arrested for…he wouldn’t say. Did he tell you, Will?”

           “…He wouldn’t say,” said Will. He tugged at the knot, took an uneven breath.

           “He kept his secrets from you, too,” she said disapprovingly. Will marveled at her eyes, no sign of tears along the rim of them.

           “I’m sorry,” he said again. He put his hands into his pockets so that he didn’t wring them.

When she linked arms with him, hands stuffed into his pockets as they were, he didn’t draw away from her. He let her have this, a memory of a relationship that’d never existed, a lie built upon the distinct lack of desire Matthew Brown had to look the fool in front of his family.

           He promised to call, and he saw them to their car, accepting a kiss on his cheek from the mother and a handshake from Mark Brown, something firm and promising. When they drove away, he stood near the grave for a long time, staring down at it. Nearby, a fresh wreath of flowers had been left for someone else. Not quite guilty, he snagged one of the roses off of the side of it and laid it over the fresh dirt.

           He hoped that when the gravediggers returned to press the sod down, they’d crush the rose beneath it.

-

           Zeller called while he was trying to unknot the stupid tie in his bathroom, and he answered with an irritable grunt, blunt fingernails picking at the satin.

           “Jack’s in a meeting, but I wanted to tell you we found the place. We’ve got a car coming to get you, and we’ll take off in thirty.”

           Thirty minutes to be on a private jet to the lair of Red Dragon. Will stared at himself in the mirror, managed to rip the tie off of his neck, and he sighed in relief. He’d have enough time for a drink.

           “Good.”

-

           He wore contacts because it was easier to concentrate without the feeling of people trying to sneak glances at his face. When they pulled up to the decrepit, peeling monstrosity at the end of a shabby lane, he looked up at it and rested his hands on his hips, frowning.

           “Is the distance bad?” Beverly asked beside him.

           Will cast her a withering glance. “It’s been worse,” he said, and that was that.

           The house had a murmur of something secretive as Will let himself in with the key from the rental property, gloved hands squeaking on the metal of the knob. They hadn’t wanted to give up a key, but with the court order they had to comply, and Will had been quick to help a secretary hang up from a whispered call she’d made while they walked into the office. It’d been to a friend to gossip, but Will wasn’t going to risk that the friend was Dolarhyde.

           “Joe Smith,” he murmured. He went in alone, as he’d requested. The rest would come in later, when he’d had enough time to inhale the taste of Red Dragon. It had been a bit of a twist, trying to get the police to let them in without having already mucked the place up with their hands; they’d been nice enough to do a sweep and declare it uninhabited. Francis Dolarhyde no longer lived at the place.

           Why have use of it now that he was on the hunt?

           It still smelled like him, though. Joe Smith, a bad name. The nursing home had assumed he was Mormon with a name like that, and they’d left his personal life well enough alone as a result. A good cover, Will thought. A great cover.

           Dust coated furniture, and he was able to see the places Red Dragon lurked. A recliner held no dust, although a small loveseat was coated in it. Will sat in the recliner, shifted and got comfortable. It was a place of peace, planning. The recliner was a throne. To the side, a small projector and a white sheet, and he picked up the first film canister, curious.

           What did Red Dragon like to watch?

           He hooked it up, fingers passing along the film as delicately as he was able, imagining his hands to be clever, quick. Red Dragon would have known how to unspool the film, set it up with ease to play. By the time Will figured it out, he found one of the things he didn’t have in common with Red Dragon –he hated old film.

           He turned it on and it clicked, whirred, ticked with each slide. The grainy footage shifted on the projector screen, and Will looked up, mouth turning to cotton at the image of Frederick Chilton glued to a chair, sweating from head to toe.

           “I have had a great privilege…I have s-seen…I have seen with wonder…wonder…and awe…the Great…Red Dragon.”

           Will didn’t like seeing him with no clothes, as vulnerable and bare as the day he’d been born. Will had made him that way, made him a target. Same way he made Matthew Brown a target.

           “I have b-blasphemed against him…spouted lies from Dr. W-Will Graham. All said was l-lies, lies, but H-He is merciful. I will serve Him, and…in s-service, redeem myself. Will Graham…reach back, W-Will Graham…reach behind you, t-touch the…knobs…knobs of your pelvis…feel where the spine meets. T-That…is the precise…place…the Red Dragon will break…y-you.”

           There was a shadow of movement, and Will watched with wide eyes, rising from the recliner as a Great Red Dragon shifted into view. It took several seconds for Will to see it as a magnificent, lovely tattoo rather than a real, breathing animal. The way he curled, shifted in stance made the spine of the dragon curl, breathe. The face cut to the side, dipped down; Will dipped with it, took a step forward and had to stop himself from lunging as Red Dragon lunged and grasped Chilton’s mouth with his teeth, bit down.

           A howling shout of pain, the sound of wheels jerking against hardwood floors –these hardwood floors, Will realized dazedly. He took a step back, then another. Red Dragon roared, Chilton screamed, and Will could only stare, half horror and half amazement at the sight of Chilton without lips, blood pouring down his face and over his teeth, rivers of red against the stark white. He screamed, and screamed, and screamed, and Will clapped his hands over his head, keening with it as he fell to his knees.

           The projector clicked off; Will pressed his forehead to the aged, ugly rug and breathed. He grasped his head rather that reach back to touch the space where Red Dragon had mentioned, the space where he was supposed to break him. He painstakingly refused.

           “Fuck you,” he seethed into the carpet. “Fuck you.”

           It took a long time for him to get up, to explore the rest of the house. He forced himself to though because he had to get to know how Red Dragon lived if he was going to make Hannibal kill him. It was only right. It was only respectful. Red Dragon probably knew the Hess’ and the Panters’ intimately before their death, so it made sense that he returned in kind.

-

           When he walked out of the house, he gave a nod to the rest of them to go in and loitered by the car. He agitatedly tugged at the gloves, removed them and stuffed them into his pocket. Fingers danced across the keypad of his phone, and he called Jack.

           “He’s not there, I know,” Jack said.

           “We interrupted him,” Will replied. He bit the fat of his cheek, imagined the sensation of flesh breaking against enamel. He imagined what Chilton’s skin tasted like. Bad, now that it was burnt.

           “What?”

           “He was going to send us a video of Chilton, but we interrupted him.”

           “Lounds’ article was released, so he probably knows now.”

           “Everyone knows now,” Will said. He rubbed his bad eye, covered as it was.

           “Where’s your head?”

           “He’s filmed the killings, Jack. We know he worked at a film place before, and he filmed his killings. They’ll all be in there. This is Red Dragon’s lair.”

           “Okay, but where’s your head?” An uncertain, wavering hesitance. “Did you watch them?”

           “It’s a good plan still,” Will assured him. He began to pace.

           “We can assume he’s-” At Will’s sudden laughter, Jack paused. “What the hell’s so funny?”

           “You remember in Quantico, that kid that said ‘we can assume’?” Will asked. “You got in his face, shoved his hand at the chalkboard and made him write A-S-S-U-M-E over and over and over again.”

           “…I remember.”

           “You grabbed the chalk from him, shoved it at his face and said, ‘WHEN YOU ASSUME, YOU MAKE AN ASS OUT OF U AND ME.’” Will pantomimed underlining the letters, grinning a little.

           “He was being an ass,” Jack said flatly.

           “I’m being an ass,” Will replied congenially. “Assume all you want, but he’s going to come for the bait.”

           “How’d you know he was interrupted?”

           “He made Chilton sing a speech about just where Dolarhyde was going to snap my spine. He wouldn’t have done that unless he was going to send it for me to see. He has no idea we’re here, otherwise he’d have burnt it up to hide evidence before he left.”

           Silence. Jack didn’t find it as funny as Will did. Realistically, Will only found it funny because he knew Red Dragon did.

           His guts twisted, panged. Hannibal was concerned for him. Hannibal hurt while he was away. Will thought to brush fingers along his skin to see if it’d blister and burn the way it felt like it would, but he didn’t. The woman on the plane was right –first was the worst. It got easier, but only just.

-

           He lay in bed the next day and stared at the ceiling, Dolarhyde’s file laid out alongside Mrs. Hess’ and Mrs. Panter’s. After a final meeting with Jack discussing for the umpteenth time the general plan, he had some free time. That time was spent seeing the Red Dragon curl and lash out on camera over and over and over again.

           He replayed Chilton’s screams over and over and over again.

           He didn’t like how he’d moved when Red Dragon moved, shifted and almost sprung. Much like a marionette he didn’t think to question when the strings were pulled. It’d made sense at the time, but as he held up a photo of Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun, he stared at the great wings and imagined them placed over Dolarhyde’s shoulders, majestic. Lethal.

           He was getting to know him very well, Will decided. A little too well.

           The madness of his mind was spilling into the cracks of Will’s. He felt it, acknowledged the sensation of near-disassociation. He both was Will Graham and not Will Graham in the silence of the hotel room, both Red Dragon and not Red Dragon. Rather than fight it, he took a sip of the rather expensive whiskey Beverly had given as a show of apology and reveled in the feeling of what it’d been to rip Chilton’s mouth off with his teeth.

           Now that he was back in Baltimore, the burning feeling had abated. He wondered if Lecter would want to see him like this, eyes dazed, too glassy. Lips chapped with constant biting, fingernails wrecked from gnawing at them in thought. He considered taking a walk, but he knew that if he looked at people while like this, he’d see people not as people but as something else –the stone I’d use to carve Michael, he thought. He’d see them as tools, beautiful tools to his Becoming.

           Dolarhyde was Red Dragon; just what exactly was Will Graham? In that moment, periodically lifting up pictures of Mrs. Hess and Mrs. Panter, he couldn’t say.

-

           Molly woke him in the early morning, early enough that he was still drunk from the night before. He fumbled with the phone, fought with it, then lifted it to his ear rather than sit up and let the room spin.

           “Hello?”

           “Will?”

           “Molly,” he realized, and his voice was equal parts awed and horrified. The sensation of her pause was stifling, and he had to sit up so that he could better breathe. Beside him, Red Dragon watched.

           “You sound drunk, Will,” she said.

           “I am drunk.”

           “From last night, or is it from this morning?”

           He wasn’t sure why she’d care, and he thought about saying that. Why care, Molly? A pause meant an end, no matter how many others wanted to suppose there was hope in the fact it wasn’t quite an absolute yet. He knew Molly though, and he knew many people like Molly; a pause was so that the doubts could crowd their mind until they suffocated whatever hope was left in salvaging the relationship –if there’d been any to begin with.

           “Last night,” he managed from a mouth that felt fat and distinctly inarticulate. “You woke me up.”

           “I’m sorry,” she said, and the words sounded odd coming from her end of the phone.

           “Don’t say those words.” He took a long, pained breath, closing his eyes to stop the room from spinning. “You…you don’t have to say those words to me.”

           She didn’t speak, and he listened to the silence of her breathing as he held the phone against his shoulder with his ear and managed to make his way to the bathroom. He had to wash his hands of the feeling of Red Dragon slithering through his bed, through his skin. He dried them with the scratchy towel by the sink and glanced up to the mirror, blanching at the mismatched, surly gaze staring back.

           “How bad is the drinking?” she asked.

           “It’s fine.”

           “Will-”

           “We’re paused, so I don’t have to feel bad about lying to you,” he said. He still felt bad, but he was just drunk enough that words were going to fall out every which way without his ability to care. He wondered how inebriation felt through the bond; did Hannibal feel drunk, or did he merely feel disconnected? Will certainly felt disconnected, disjointed. His body was not his own.

           His eyes weren’t his own.

           “You do feel bad, though,” she said. “I can tell.”

           “I do,” he agreed.

           “My parents say hello,” she redirected when he said nothing more.

“Hello.”

“…I saw the news article, Will.”

           He nodded, the true motives behind her phone call finally revealed.

           “Everyone’s seen the news article.”

           Not everyone. Matthew Brown’s mother and brother didn’t seem to read Tattler News, and he loved them a little bit for that. When they did finally find articles about Matthew, maybe they’d only see the part where he aided a psychopath, not the part where the psychopath was connected to Matthew’s faux-lover? If he had it in him to hope, he’d have hoped ardently that they simply let Matthew Brown go to rest, so that their memories of him wouldn’t be tainted with his lies, with his deceit. They wouldn’t love him the same if they realized he’d lied about his relationship, if the person he claimed was his boyfriend was in actuality involved with the woman he’d helped to almost murder.

           No one can love the same when that love becomes tainted with something unrecognizable, something they never knew to be wary of. They may continue to love, but as Molly had fast found out, it is not a love that can sustain. It is not a love that can grow.

           “How did she find out?”

           “The way Freddie always finds out,” Will said sagely. That wasn’t true; Freddie normally found out through not entirely legal means, and this time they’d given it to her hook, line, and sinker.

           Will refused to pose for photos, this time.

           “Oh, Will,” she sighed quietly, and it burned in a way he couldn’t handle. He continued to stare at his gaunt features in the mirror, focusing on the way his pupils dilated whenever he paid particular attention to the maroon eye rather than the blue.

           “Oh, Molly,” he returned with only the mildest hints of sarcasm.

           “How are you feeling? I just…you’re alone in that hotel room, aren’t you? This is happening with Lounds all over again, except this time you’re alone.”

           “No I’m not,” he whispered, pressing the phone to his ear. “Don’t worry about me, Molly. This is why you paused us, isn’t it? I’m not alone; I’ve got Hannibal-fucking-Lecter.”

           It was meant to sound harsh, but it was bleak. It was meant to needle at her, really punch it to her that she’d shifted aside and paused him to let a psychopath in, but as he stared at that eye, he couldn’t make his voice aggressive. He could only sound pained, agonized. The room swayed, and he swayed with it, catching himself. He felt like he was falling underwater again.

           She wanted to ask about it. He could taste her burning need to know. “How…does he make you feel?”

           “I’m staring in the mirror, and I don’t know who I am anymore,” he confessed. He thought of Matthew Brown, whose life was cut short because he’d been cruel when he could have been kind. He thought of Chilton enduring acute agony because he’d been cruel when he could have been dismissive. “I don’t recognize my own face. These…these aren’t my eyes, Molly. How do I feel? How the fuck do you think I feel, being a soulmate to someone like that?”

           “Will-”

           “I said this would change me, and I told everyone; I told you, I told Jack, I told Alana, I told…everyone.” He stared at his eyes, at the shadows underneath. He told Jack that being connected to Hannibal made him feel like he’d pressed black paint to his eyes. He wondered what Molly would say if he said it to her instead.

           “You told me,” Molly agreed. “You…tried to warn me, and I pushed you anyway.”

           “I’m not drinking a lot,” he tried to reassure her. “Just a little.”

           She was quiet at that, and she let him have his lies. When they were paused, he could lie to her all that he liked, it seemed. He figured, finally dragging himself out of the bathroom, it said more about him than it did about her, that the simple difference of wording –paused rather than together, a break rather than a whole –made him feel somewhat less guilty about lying so abrasively and badly.

           He blamed it on the alcohol, since she’d woken him up while he was still very much under its thrall. When he woke up again later, he knew to just blame himself instead, like any other honest alcoholic would.

[tckeonme-blog]

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