#austin's hours

[answertocarnality]

diversity win! the two bloodied men who just smashed UP your car also smashed IN your car !!

[rwrbmovie]

firstprince + beds DC • Paris • New York • Austin • London

[firstprince + couches]

[hogans-heroes]

[mediumgayitalian]

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———

Whenever they drive into town, arguing over who sits where and spilling buckets of strawberries all over the floor, the music blasts so loudly on the horrible, tinny speakers that it vibrates the entire van, and still the group of them is so loud that the songs get drowned out anyway. It is especially worse if, Nico will admit, he and Chiara are in the front seats together, whatever argument they delight in having raising New York’s noise pollution levels by four percent at least. If there is enough fruit to warrant two vans, and all sixteen of them will go, they will race down the highway, drowning each other out with the pure force of their shrieking voices. People stare. Cars slow to a stop. Cars follow them, even, mouths open, wondering at these grinning, hollering fools, dressed in neon and crawling all over each other.

It has been a long time since Nico has driven in silence.

Even as a child there was noise. No radios in cars, yet, they’d hardly been invented, but he and Bianca would scarcely be within miles of each other without bickering. Crowded in the backseat of Nonno’s Alfa Romeo, shouting for Mama in between even every poked shoulder and shoved face, there was noise. In the backseat of Alecto’s SUV, too, muffled as it was, and in every car he raced at the Lotus. Even up front with Jules-Albert, there has always been something. Grumbling, usually, live Grand-Prix reporting if the season is right. Music if he is in a good mood and Nico can convince him.

The silence that rings from the coast of Long Island to the bridge over the Savannah River is unbearable. Even the van is unbelievably quiet, rusted shocks creakless and ancient engine quiet as a grave. As if it too is straining to hear the words Will is murmuring, over and over again, nonstop for hours; hunched over with his hands clasped and pressed to the bridge of his nose.

Nico knows the Lord’s prayer in five languages. He hasn’t spoken it in years, but it’s stuck in his brain the same way as the alphabet; he knows the rhythm, the place of every breath, the rise and fall of the words as they crest towards the heavens. Prayers go unanswered at the best of times, trickling down the soil and bedrock and gathering in the currents of the Styx, but Will prays like he is programmed to do it. Like it is all he has left to do. They leave in the grey peak of the afternoon and drive through the night, and the kids sleep in the back, and Will prays across the freeways, over the bridges, through the gas stations, straight through traffic. His voice scratches and fades and he does not stop, the tears roll down his cheeks and bubble into his mouth and he does not stop, the twisted-in hymns glow along every peek of sunlight, burning his throat and his hands, and he does not stop. He prays like the dying in line to be judged, like the weeping shades along the stone walkways of Asphodel, like the desolate on the bank of the River. He prays like he knows it is already over, and he is desperate for the strength to move forward.

When they pull into the parking lot it is late morning, and Nico has been driving for fifteen hours, and the sun is cowering behind black dirt stormclouds, and the heat is as oppressively constant as the Pit. Nico feels like he is standing at the mouth of something cavernous. Staring down sharp teeth and a maw the size of an island. He feels like he is teetering, balancing, tipping; like the single point on the ground moments before lightning strikes it. Close your eyes and hold out your hands. What is coming next is inescapable.

“Do we go in?”

Kayla’s voice is timid. It is never timid, and it jolts his obliques and abdominis into action, into stretching. She holds hands with her brother, and they are pressed shoulder to shoulder, eyes wide, mouths set brave and trembling,

and they are pressed shoulder to shoulder

eyes wide

mouths set brave and trembling

his ankle is twisted around hers

her skull ring knicks the flesh of his ring finger

her hands are cool

her voice is steady

her body shakes.

Where are you taking us? We would like to go home, please. Can we call our mother?

“Let’s go find Mama,” Nico hears himself say. Sees Will’s hands twitch. Watches Kayla flinch in the rearview. Feels Austin’s leg bounce the van.

His mouth feels like sand, like worn denim. Dry, desert sand, desert sand; Nevada air through the open window.

“Mama,” Will echoes. He chokes. His whole body shudders, shudders, compresses; shrinks down, mouth still moving. Knuckles white. “Mama.”

Nico swallows.

“Kayla,” says his mouth, “take your brother to go pay parking.” Take your brother inside. Wait for me; I’ll be back soon. Don’t leave the hotel. “Here.”

He hands her his father’s card, and she takes it, untangling from Austin but keeping their hands joined when he grabs for her. The van door wrenches open because the tracks are rusty and Nico jumps with it, exhaling past Kayla’s muttered apologies, waiting for the two of them to climb out and hurry across the asphalt. Huddle at the parking meter, poking at the button.

Nico opens his door and climbs out, shutting it carefully, walking calmly around the front of the van. He opens Will’s door and it doesn’t move, locked, so it waits, and when Will makes no move to pull the little lever he reaches around the door Kayla left open, pulling it himself. The door swings widely open, bouncing slightly on its hinges, and Will doesn’t so much as flinch, doesn’t so much as glance towards it.

Nico reaches out, slowly, and takes his clenched hands.

They’re wet.

He peels back his clenched fingers, one by one, and they are stiff, formed to shape. He takes a moment to straighten them, carefully, slowly, until his palms rest upwards again, fingers limp. When he presses their palms together Will’s fingers twitch, ever so slightly, around his, and he drags their hands up to his mouth and presses his knuckles to his lips, tasting the salt, tasting the iron of his cracked chapped skin. Will’s hand twitches, again, and his face matches; contorting and crumpling and breaking, for a second.

“Will,” he murmurs, salt like the coast, like Nonna’s villa, like the water slide, “Will, look at me.”

He does. He looks to him like he’s dragging himself like he is clawing his own way upright.

“I can’t again,” he croaks, “I —” and he stops, or rather he is cut off, by the sob that fights it’s way out of his throat. It is sharp like skull fragments. Some part of Nico bleeds.

“You won’t.” He drops Will’s hand and clasps instead both sides of his face, pulling him down until their foreheads press tightly together, until their breathing shares the same space, until he can feel every shudder against his skull. “We will save her.”

As he says it Nico knows he will make it so. Kayla and Austin run back to the van, ticket clenched in both of their hands, Will squeezes his eyes shut and nods, once, before sitting straighter than he has in hours, and Nico knows that he will not let Will lose.

Not again.

———

next

[mastersoftheair]

first look at Masters of the Air!!! streaming JANUARY 26!!!

[feralgodmothers]

So I just learned that including Polk Salad Annie in Elvis (2022) was Austin’s idea…

Thank you for your service sir 🫡

[heretoobsessstuff]

Why didn’t anyone tell me Austin has narrated a whole ass audiobook (carve the mark by veronica roth) IM LOSING MY MINDDDD

[reyenii]

— i was even thinking maybe you’d be my best man. — i will be your best man.

[celaenaeiln]

Dick: *searching for his teammate post-battle* Romeo, Romeo! Where art thou Romeo?

Jason: Shut up. Shut up! Don’t you dare desecrate Shakespearen literature you Neanderthal.

Dick: *offended* what?

Jason: heh, you didn’t get that? Dumb.

Dick:

Dick: Well, Little Wing, right now you’re walking an average speed of 3.1 mph and you’re going to fire your grapple gun to shoot across to another building but in order to do so you need to increase your running speed because the tension on the string is opposing the Normal force at an angle and if you count the weight of gravity, you have to calculate F=ma with cos of 46 degrees or else the grapple won’t latch on but since there’s a high frictional force between your boot and the ground, the coefficient of static friction is much higher than normal so as such, you need to lower the coefficient of kinetic friction so you have the momentum to reach peak velocity needed to boost you into the air and not suspend your rope so that’d be your final velocity squared equal to your initial velocity squared minus 2 times gravity times your final height minus your initial height. So in conclusion, your initial speed of run must be 5.3 mph if you don’t want to bash your head open on a brick wall.

Jason: what.

Dick: oh you didn’t get that? Dumb.

Jason: ….Bitch.

[housecow]

WAIT U WERE IN MARCHING BAND?? WHATD U PLAY? (euphonium player here)

clarinet 😭😭😭 if you were in regular band you had to do marching band too… it was a love-hate relationship bc i promise you i did NOT enjoy actually being active haha—but some of my fav memories from HS are bc of band 🥺

except that time we did two competitions in a single 103° day. dear god

[starsandstars]

Awww he misses his angel wings.

[answertocarnality]

if i had a nickel for each time wade made a comment/ joke about logan's dick, i'd have two nickels. which i guess isn't a lot but it's quite weird that it happened twice

[zanepilled]

pixal's leitmotif has to be my favorite one in the show, hands down. it appears often with vocals and i LOVE vocals in soundtracks, and its orchestral appearances never fail either. it even has an obligatory silly version in that joyride scene with kai.

also, crystalized ate up this motif, with two of my favorite instances being "mini-pix to the rescue" as well as the reoccurrence of season 3's "built to protect" in that scene where zane wakes up. the cello overture part from the funeral scene plays when she's talking to him, and then cuts to the big vocal ending with pixal's theme but in a different key than the original (not sure why, since the cello part was in the same key, but it was fire regardless). clearly built to protect is my favorite track and i analyze it a lot but come onnn it has the perfect combo of zane's and pix's themes with VOCALS ... plus the CONTEXT... LISTENN TO ME

[fridgrave]

schlatt in zombie apocalypse au gives me a brainrot

actually i have some thoughts on "the last of us" crossover where he helps tommy (who is immune to the virus-fungus shit) and wilbur to get into the medical station where scientists can make a cure

[getetteroo]

Yeah baby.

[mastersoftheair]

from appletv's instagram story