#(moritz) v; how to handle all the sadness in your soul

[andessence]

☛ @ Moritz from doubleheadedking

manhandling starters // @doubleheadedking ☛ - press a finger to my muse’s lips to shut them up

"——He said he threw like a girl, and so that's when Otto said that he'd had enough and he threw it right at Lämmermeier, while his back was turned, which was very unsportsmanlike if you ask m——" Melchior's hand flies toward Moritz's face and she flinches on instinct, the voice that was raised in excited recounting now faltering, stopping. But all Melchior does is press one finger firmly to her lips, bewildering Moritz. "M- Melchi?" she ventures uncertainly, feeling a little foolish to be shut up by this (honestly slightly rude) gesture. But Melchior has a certain air about him, confident, superior, and presently a little impatient, that makes Moritz's mind blank and her attention surrender to him as instinctively as she'd flinched.

[zuerhaben]

“ calm down ” (doubleheadedking)

two word starters // @doubleheadedking

“CALM DOWN!” A tremulous, panicked, and humorless laugh shakes her body as she regards her friend with bemusement. “CALM DOWN! Oh, if only I could! Look at you, so easy, so peaceful, so together! How do you do that? How do you ———” She turns away, seeking some sort of escape from the sensible, intelligent look of him, and wraps her arms about herself just to remind her body that the  C R U M B L I N G  sensation it feels is not as real as it seems.

Her throat feels thick and her heart pounds hard under too-hot skin. 

“I don’t think I know the word at all anymore — calm! What’s that? It’s lost to me. I don’t— I can’t—” Suddenly she is fighting the impulse to rush to him, to seize him in her hands and beg for his help. FIX ME, she wants to cry, and the words knock against her teeth when she presses her lips against them. HELP ME. 

… He can’t. A fearful voice comes in, and what can she do but listen? Melchior can’t save, and you can’t be saved. Moritz remembers her father’s gun.

“I must go. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of it, I—” She’s talking too much. She’ll never be through if she doesn’t stop herself now, and so whatever she meant to tell him is rendered to SILENCE, and she repeats simply, “I must go.”

[andessence]

@takealook-fall​ // call. (always accepting for moritz lol)

“It certainly is a surprise——! Wendla Bergmann, about in the woods alone. ... I suppose I am also about in the woods alone. I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.” Moritz CRINGES. An apologetic laugh makes her duck her head. She never knows if she can talk like this with the girls — if she can joke with them. Thea is obstinately judgmental, Martha is quiet and intense... But Wendla was once a particular friend; she, Moritz, Melchi, and Ilse had had a unique camaraderie. Maybe it’s foolish, but she hopes that Wendla remembers and  m i s s e s  those simpler times as she does.

[andessence]

@vineyardkisses // permanent starter call.

“Is it true, do you think?” Moritz’s palms rub over the tops of her thighs, as if they can’t find anything to keep them busy enough. The half-drafted essay cast onto the ground in front of her could keep those hands busy, but the mind would not follow suit, and so it is forgotten in favor of anxious fidgeting. Her eyes pass over Ernst, but flicker around them first, worried to be heard. “About Max— What Hänschen said...? Do you think he’s really DEAD?” The word is thick and dull on her tongue, but surprisingly easy to get out. “Do you think he really saw Max die?”

[andessence]

‘what keeps you up at night?’ from melchior to moritz

soft angst starters

“Oh, a million things! But… of late? A flash of bare thigh.” This is said with the utmost gravity — a tremulous whisper which indicates perhaps even a touch of nausea. “One of the girls, last week… I saw her playing by the woods and she gathered up berries in her skirt. It hiked up and I saw——! … I think she CAUGHT ME staring, Melchi. Oh God,” she wails, head falling against her arms over the table. Striving against the muffling effect of her sleeve, she goes on. “I keep living that instant over and over, seeing and being seen. But you know, I can’t remember what she looked like — who it was, even! Was she scared? Did she laugh? My mind redraws her again and again, but there’s no face, no head.”

She lets out a pathetic, low groan that explains more than her jumbled thoughts ever could. There is a pause, and then the tentative, half-certain flicker of her eyes toward her friend. “How do you stand it, Melchior? How do you stand KNOWING?”

[andessence]

☄ (4 moritz)

acts of affection☄ Leaning your head on their shoulder while they talk.

She’s glad she came. She nearly hadn’t. Even with her hand curled to knock on the door she whispered anxiously to herself that it was late, that she would be imposing, that Melchior was almost certainly asleep anyway, along with everyone in the house. For all her second thoughts, though, she’d gathered her resolve and knocked. Well done! she thinks, as she feels Melchior’s head against her shoulder in the dark of his room. They sit on the floor and lean against the frame of his bed to see the stars through his window, and Moritz swells.  WELL DONE!

But congratulations seem inappropriate if she considers for more than a second. Melchior is in a state like she’s never seen him before — withdrawn, quiet, scared. Moritz has been rambling about this and that, avoiding the most essential of questions until Melchior wants to explain his state to her, but this gentle touch, this admission of the  n e e d  for comfort ———! While she feels proud of herself, her concern for Melchior must come first. 

“What happened to you?”

[andessence]

@the-question-is-shame // continued.

Melchior hesitates to lay all of this on Moritz. She is here, finally — comforting him with her presence and her words. He had felt compelled by some unseen force to do a bit more than normal — the resting of head on shoulder. It feels warm, safe, natural. But could he possibly admit what was going through him today? Lay ownership to the spear lodged in his side? His touch feels as if it could sear Moritz. He does not dare go any further.

And yet — to keep this from a friend he loved so felt disingenuous. He must tell. But o, what torture! Uneasily and with great consternation he navigates the beginning of a conversation which will, he’s certain, change how Moritz sees him forever.

“M- uh, do you… do you remember Wendla Bergmann?” A formality of a rhetorical question. Of course she remembers. Those dog days frittered away playing Swiss Family Robinson — who could forget the companions of childhood innocence, etched as they are onto every part of you? Melchior glances furtively to Moritz for an indication of assent, and, upon receiving it, continues.

“She — we — we were in the forest together. She ambushed me while I was sitting under my tree.” His Eden, if there could be such a thing. “We spoke for a while, about this and that. Caught up with life, as it were. I felt as if I hadn’t seen her in years. Like she was a ghost.”

He is stalling. Burying the lede to avoid burying anyone else. And he knows it. A small cough, indicating a shift in the conversation.

“Did you know Martha’s father beats her? Every night?”

Moritz listens with near-reverent attention, anticipating a  c o n f e s s i o n .  Even as she does though, she can’t help feeling that when it comes she won’t know what to say, or will say the WRONG THING. It is somewhat of a relief, then, that Melchior rambles. It give her time to prepare herself. And so she nods at the mention of Wendla (then realizes a nod is less effective when Melchior’s position prevents his seeing her head, and hums recognition); she noises appropriately at the account of their conversation, noticing how he struggles just a bit to begin. She hopes he feels safe with her. She hopes he knows he can say anything when it’s JUST THEM, and that her small, wordless assurances are, well, assuring.

She perceives the shift in his tone. Oh, he’s going to say it, whatever it is! She’s ready for—! 

Not for that. 

She finds herself stammering without before she can even think to form thoughts. Martha? Martha Bessell? She thinks about the few times she’s spoken with Martha, and the overtures they’d made at friendship at parties, relying on their old, stale, pre-school play. She thinks about Martha, pulling down her sleeves when they inch up her wrists. She thinks about Martha, being STRUCK. She shivers.

“I... I didn’t know. Martha and I aren’t— We don’t——— Did Wendla tell you that?”

[zuerhaben]

@the-question-is-shame // continued.

“Is it just that you can’t see the flaws when it’s dark? Or is it more that the flaws aren’t there at all?,” Melchior asks from his usual spot: seated and leaning against a massive oak tree. “I think darkness accentuates charm in a great many things.” The two had never been here at this time, but once Melchior had found out what the riverside was like in the dark, he knew that Moritz had to know as well. “Really, Moritz. You must have been here, with me, under this very tree… hundreds of times, yes? Sitting here, talking, laughing, and yet tonight it feels different. Wait-”

Melchior suddenly sits up, closing the space between the two. He holds up his hand and the immediate silence fills the air, comfortable yet undeniably thick. And then… the ever-so-slight sounds of nature begin to creep in: crickets, frogs, and the occasional babblings of a nearby stream. “Tell me that isn’t the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard,” Melchior whispers in a voice nigh undetectable to anyone… other than the friend hovering a hand’s length away from his face. Once Melchi is satisfied that Moritz has taken in enough, he sits back and begins to speak in a more conversational tone. “Astounding. You know, if we were with anyone else - if we were not alone - we never would have been able to experience that.”

She stiffens in surprise at Melchior’s unexpected motion, but the calm of this special place is pervasive, and so is the security that comes with one good friend; she isn’t nearly as startled as could be expected of her. Then the obedient silence as Melchior listens. Moritz listens too, and hear the sounds of water from the stream, the rattling of tree branches with their quaking leaves on the wind, even the blood rushing in her own ears with that faint RINGING. Yes, she hears it all, and hears too with some sensibility the passion in Melchior’s next words that come after the long quiet. She doesn’t understand more than the vague charm of the woods, though. It means so little, but FEELS so nice.

“Maybe that’s so,” she mumbles, and then, venturing a playful tone: “Or maybe it’s just late and the night is getting to you.” But she doesn’t truly discount him so greatly, and her words hold no intellectual threat. there is something special about the woods, but she doesn’t think it could be heard, or explained. Even now she looks out past the roots of Melchior’s tree to the brush, and up past the leave to the stars, and — though her mouth feels dry and her lips, novice at the thought of speaking it — thinks she sees impish shadows moving fleetly all about them. “...Do you suppose any of us are ever really  a l o n e ?  Completely? You can’t say ‘we’re alone’ and have it mean anything at least, can you? A ‘we’ could never be...” But the thought trails off, either out of distraction or confusion.

[andessence]

“ i want my life back. ” from wendla for moritz

phrases that really hit you where it hurts

A sentiment Moritz understands, though the way in which Wendla implements it is obscure to her. She feels a deep, dull ache in her chest which she thought she was beyond now — now that she’d made up her mind about things. (Tonight, she thinks. Tonight I’m gone.) After all, what could hurt her more than her complete failure and assured doom? Wendla Bergmann could, apparently, with a keening, sorry complaint during a chance encounter by the stream. How long has it been since Moritz knew her — really knew her? And yet old familiarity and sympathy PLUCK at her heartstrings.

“Wendla, what happened to you?”

[andessence]

“Can you button up my dress for me?” from martha

sexual tension starters

“Can I…?” Her mouth is dry; the words are hard to push out. But she has to ask — to clarify — because she feels certain it’s impossible for her to have heard what she thinks she heard, and Martha is looking at her, waiting for an answer. Moritz can see the skin, bare, in the gape of her dress, and it CHILLS her.

They’re meeting eyes as Martha turns over her shoulder, and the movement in the muscles of her back catch Moritz’s attention, though she rather strives to look as if it hasn’t, and despite the PARALYSIS that’s momentarily seized her, her mouth struggles to find speech again.

She shouldn’t be so scandalized by it all! Hadn’t she declared to Melchior her plan to break her someday-children of shame, sleeping in the same bed together, dressing and undressing, and never fearing the shape of their own bodies? She’s a hypocrite, she thinks, to be startled, herself by the kind of friendly trust this request surely must represent. She’s worse still for denying it, now that the prelude to friendship between them has become more firmly cemented. (And how!? Moritz barely knows it, but she must not FAIL it!)

“You mean, you wouldn’t mind if I…?” And her fingers, definitely not trembling, reach toward her.

[andessence]

moritz tag drop !

[andessence]

“Here, lay down in my lap.” (doubleheadedking)

platonic requests for affection // @doubleheadedking

Moritz doesn’t much feel like laying down at all when her head buzzes so terribly. She doesn’t feel that she’ll be able to KEEP STILL. But Melchior’s voice is a comfort against all else, and the quality of guidance which Moritz attributes to everything that Melchior says is well-rooted and unshakable. She does as he says, and doesn’t even think until her cheek is pressed against his thigh and her arm is wrapped about his knee that this is a peculiar posture for two boys to find themselves in. Should she be embarrassed? Even just thinking it, she’s conjured up the feeling, and suddenly is taken up in a sense of SHAME because — well, because she’s so dreadfully comfortable! She still shifts, yes, and the impulse to fidget is present, but she could be laying in her mother’s lap, even, such a profoundly pleasant sensation it is! The guilt she’s manufactured is powerful, but not enough so to win out over such a primal sense of want. 

She may be more flustered now than she was before the suggestion!

“You’re awfully warm,” she murmurs, only to say something that might approach normalcy. “Or is it only that I’m so awfully cold…?”

[zuerhaben]

“I need to tell you how I feel.” (doubleheadedking)

emotional starters // @doubleheadedking

She doesn’t like the sound of that. She can’t even quite explain why, but the anticipation of what Melchior could possibly say after such a declaration is NAUSEATING; the beating of her heart in her throat and the sweating of palms pressed awkwardly between her knees as she looks at him in expectation are only the most obvious symptoms.

“I don’t know what that means… Is something wrong?”

[zuerhaben]

‘  kinda weird that u can think about someone as much as u want and they have no idea  ’ - Martha B!

text post starters

Her eyes seem intentionally distant, as if she were compelling them out of some terror not to meet Martha’s, but there is a melancholy on that pale and weary young face that speaks to some truth in this distraction. She hears the words as they come, but it is just MARTHA’S VOICE, more and more of Martha’s voice, sweet and quiet and senseless almost, and she’s been listening closely but hearing nothing at all. After a moment of SILENCE that follows the remark, Moritz realizes that she’s being prompted for an ANSWER. 

Those distant eyes suddenly cannot help finding Martha’s face. After scrambling to recall what’s been said, she finds her voice breaking and mumbling. “You… Yes, weird. … But could you imagine if they did know, though?”

[zuerhaben]

but does it seem right to you, herr Stiefel, that anyone should have to fail our classes for lack of seats? would it not prove wiser simply to find or even build a better space? or perhaps they could even cut the class into halves and teach thirty of us at a time!

“What does it matter if it seems right to me?” she murmurs in a genuinely perplexed voice. The furrowing of her brow and set of her lips says that the momentary pensiveness is passed, though, when she resumes: “None of that matters, of course, as I WILL NOT be failing. I’m to win one of those sixty seats, I’m sure of it! The others have nothing to lose, but I– I know that I won’t fail because I can’t afford to.”

Moritz has never been the REVOLUTIONARY type. Her mind works over the problem of the sixty seats and sees only the hope of pushing aside the other boys to have the last spot. The very idea that the number is arbitrary, that there’s no reason for sixty seats instead of sixty-one, seventy, a  h u n d r e d  even, is impossible to her. It would unravel everything, naturally! Why sixty students? Why anything? It all hangs together.

This query then produces little effect in her. She hears it, and the words make enough sense, but the thing itself is too distant to be grasped. She almost LAUGHS, even, as she thinks more about it. Just move the classroom and increase the size of the student body! What a thought!

“You’ll never make it yourself if you keep thinking like that. Things can’t change. Or if they can– You can’t COUNT on all that. Only work hard, and if you work hard enough, you’ll see the upper grade too.”