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accessible-flatland-art · 1 year ago

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Pinned post.

[ID: The icon for this blog, which is a black right triangle on a brown square background, with text following the diagonal of the triangle, reading, "Let irregulars enjoy fandom too.". End ID.]

Please copy and paste the image description I write into the original post for your art, rather than simply reblogging it from me. (You can also reblog it too, if you want, thought!). Plain text (what you're reading right now) is more accessbile than ALT text because tumblr is a glitched mess.

The image description should go directly below the image being described, above comments, and stay in normal sized, black text, without italics, bold, or colors. It may be indented (like above) to make it easier to distinguish from the rest of the text in the post. This is in fact more accessible.

This blog is run by @rjalker so it's easier to keep track of which Flatland art has an ID already, and so people have an easy place to find it all.

Anyone can reblog from this blog, even if I have you blocked on my main. I block people sometimes just to filter posts and then forget to unblock...RIP

Please note: I cannot describe posts with eyeburningly neon colors, flashing lights, or audio that is difficult to hear or very fast paced.

If you list your OCs names, pronouns, and shapes in the post itself, it will make it much easier for me to describe.

___

Posts on the blog so far: 404 Posts still in the drafts: 1,022

Blog created on September 18th, 2023 Numbers last updated: September 7 2024

(The drafts consist of all of the undescribed Flatland art, and art that is described but I still have to tag, that I could find in the whole tag going back to January 2022, at which point tumblr started giving me random unrelated posts instead. Not sure if it ran out of Flatland posts, or just stops actually keeping track of tagged posts after a year...?)

Here is a link to a post with many places to read, watch, and listen to Flatland, all for free, because the book is public domain.

Very important note:

Very important edit: Ladd Ehlinger, the creator of the 2007 film that’s free on youtube, is an extremely racist and misogynistic conservative. He made a political ad so blatantly racist and sexist that youtube has literally resstricted it, so that you can’t share the link outside the site. Simply google his name and you will see dozens upon dozens of articles about how bigoted he is.

Please be aware of what kind of person made that movie when you watch it. His bigotry is baked into the movie, and is why he refused to actually do anything with the original political commentary from the book.

You are not a bad person if you already watched the movie and enjoyed it, but you do need to be aware of what kind of person made it and how that affected the movie, and make sure others are warned. He is also here on tumblr with the username filmladd. I highly recommend blocking him.

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The tagging system for this blog is under the cut so this post doesn't get too long. More tags will be added as I find more art to reblog.

The tags in use so far, which I have saved to a notepad so I can just copy and paste them as needed.

Some tags are newer, so might not show up on all art! Let me know if there's any that should be added to specific posts, or if there's any tags you want to see to be able to search for!

please copy and paste into the original post for accessability no credit needed! It should go directly below the image and stay in regular#text without color italics or bold though you can make it indented like I have it here! Image descriptions are like subtitles for blind ppl

described images, described art, Flatland, Flatland art, Flatart,

transcribed audio, transcribed lyrics, lyrics, music,

Photoedits,

Physical books,

Flatland a Romance of Many Dimensions, Flatland Illustrations,

Book collections, Flatland collections,

The Color Revolt, Configurationism, Circularchy,

Stylized form, Literal form,

Gijinka,

anthropomorphized, humanoid, anthropoid,

objecthead,

Flatland animals, Flatland rabbit, Flatland bees, Flatland horse, Flatland chicken, Flatland dog, Flatland cat, Flatland mouse,

Flatland technology,

Flatland anatomy, Flatland worldbuilding, Flatland cosmology, Flatland structure,

Spaceland worldbuilding,

maps,

A Square, The Sphere,

The Sphere 1965, A Square 1965,

A Square, A Square 2007, A Sphere 2007,

Spherius 2007, the Sphere,

Adam the Square, Spherus the Sphere,

Kormance the Sphere,

The Grandson of a Square, A Square's Wife, The Wife of A Square, The Sons of A Square, The Great Great Great Great Great Grandfather of A Square, The King of Lineland, The Monarch of Pointland, Chromatistes, Chromatistes the Pentagon,

memes, Flatland memes,

Public domain characters in Flatland, Flatland versions of characters,

Public domain characters,

Family Trees, Comic, Animation,

Flatland OCs, Original characters, Flatland original characters,

Character reference,

Disabled characters, Characters with disability aids, Characters with glasses, Characters with visual impairment,

Disabled characters, Neurodivergent characters, Physically disabled characters, Characters with mobility aids, Characters with disability aids, Characters with prosthetics, Characters with canes, Characters with walkers, Characters with swimmers, Characters with glasses, Characters with wheelchairs, Characters with chairs, Characters with sleds, Characters with crutches, Characters with rollators, Characters with scars, Characters with facial differences, Characters with limb differences, Characters with visual impairment, Blind characters,

Queer characters, LGBTQIA+ characters, Gay characters, Bi characters, mspec characters, Lesbian characters, Trans characters, Nonbinary characters, Characters who use neopronouns, Characters who use multiple pronoun sets, Aroace characters, Aspec characters, Omni characters,

Black Characters, Characters of color,

Irregular characters, Deirregular Characters,

Werestars, Stellanthropes, Shapeshifters, dragons, serpents, weredragons,

Characters with wings, Characters with tails,

Sphereland, Flatterland, The Arts of Being, The Breaking Point, Neopronouns in Action, Flat Dreams, Flatterland, Flatland the film 2007, Flatland the movie 2007, Flatland 1965, A Visit to Numberland, Numberland, Flatland Heist 2013,

Neopronouns in Action 062, Neopronouns in Action,

Neopronouns in Action 090, Neopronouns in Action,

A 2024 Flatland Summary,

Tarzan of the Apes, Mickey Mouse,

Dayo,

Esther Flat Dreams, Nora Vigenere, Nora Flat Dreams,

Pollux Codex, Madelyn Schwarz-Carver, Hunter Schwarz, Marianne Smith, Michael the Misogynist Pentagon, Providence, Nature, Providence and Nature, Germs, Mr Square, A Shape,

Oblisi,

Liam,

A Son of A Square,

Cy,

Frau Line,

Lily Cipher,

Ruth Galton, Ruth, Liz, Elizabeth Huntsworth, Stella, Orbis, Irene Huntsworth, Mama Huntsworth, Chief Jr, Atlas Huntsworth, Atlas, Vance,Vance Huntsworth, Elijah, Elijah Huntsworth, Jasper,Jasper Huntsworth, 01 Isosceles,

Vincent, Trey,

Rutabega,

Hauntlight the Irregular Line, Cenotaph the rabbit aether, Sirenade the Irregular Multiangulus, Raptigan the _, Avispa Oro, Beatris Baker, Mo Guy, Unnamed characters, Billie Bob and Joe, Billie the Straight Line, Bob the Circle, Joe the Hexagon,

Jerult the Irregular Kite, Cairis Garret the Equilateral Triangle, Letel the Isosceles Triangle, Aralinda the Straight Line, Leteralinda the Straight Line, Ambrosine the Straight Line, Lucille the Straight Line, Carolayn the Kite, Tristram the Isosceles Triangle,

Arsenn Lupin, Arsene Lupin, AScrossover, Arsene Lupin crossover, Ortence Daniel, Hortense Daniel,

Flyssa of Ib-Wa, Dearg of Ib-Wa, Lieutenant Kellite the Configurationist, Grandna Tuokeli,

Angelica Tessan, A Tesseract, Abel Spherious, A Sphere, Anthony Squaur, A Square,

Vikki Line, Victoria Line, Lee Line, Jubilee Line,

Huffy,

Bill Cipher, Gravity Falls, GFcrossover, The Book of Bill, , Flatfalls, The Mother of Bill Cipher, The Father of Bill Cipher,

Dipper Pines, Mabel Pines, Ford Pines, The Axolotl, Andrew Kryptos, The Mosaic,

Carlton,

Randie,Gravity Falls, GFcrossover, Flatfalls,

Flatsune Miku, Hatsune Miku,

Astrum, Astrum the five pointed star, Funis, Pi,

Ted the vwindir,

A Squared shipping, Quadsphere shipping, ASquarexTheSphere, Squaresphere, Squeer,

Spacelanders, Flatlanders, Linelanders, Pointlanders, Hyperspacelanders, Exter Dimensional beings, Higher Dimensional Beings, Beings From Unknnown Dimensions, Planiversers, Numberlandians,

Walking Flatlanders, Swimflying Flatlanders,

Alternate Universe Forms,

Video, autoplay, GIF, Autoplay, WIP animation, Unnamed Animation 001, Animation,

games, downloads,

Flatland Merch, Art you can buy, Art you can print,

public domain art, public domain designs, public domain characters,

Square characters, Sphere characters,

Straight Line characters, Irregular Line characters,

Triangle characters, Isosceles characters, Equilateral characters, Scalene characters,

Rectangle characters, Irregular square characters, Kite characters,

Circle characters, Irregular circle characters,

Pentagon characters, Hexagon characters, Septagon characters, Octagon characters,

unspecific characters,

Art templates,

plush, plushies, arts and crafts,

Ty for adding it to the original,:), ID added in reblog, ID in original,:),

Plain text ID added in reblog, Original ID in ALT text, :),

#pinned post #Flatland #accessible art blog #accessible art #described art #accessible art blogs #image descriptions #accessability

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feverinfeveroutfic · 3 years ago

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chapter eleven: the end of the world

The next morning was a cold, gray, and soggy one, but Sam had no intention on returning to Louie's apartment for another round that day: she had already packed her things in the back seat and she nestled down in the front seat with her arms folded across her chest and the lapels of her jacket pulled up to her ears. She had no hood or something to cover her head but she wished for one. She didn't want to be seen. Louie himself meanwhile, locked the door behind him and he headed down the steps. She looked on at him as he rounded the front end of the car and opened the door. She sighed through her nose as he climbed into the front seat.

“You okay?” he asked her in a low voice, and she nodded her head.

“Look—I was thinking about this last night before I fell asleep, too,” he started, “neither of us mean to inflame or kick up any old wounds with anyone. We're just—fooling around, messing around, you know?”

She gazed out the window right as he said that. She had nothing to say to that.

“If either of us made you uncomfortable—and I can tell we did—we didn't mean to. I didn't mean to, and I know Alex didn't mean to, either. And for that, I want to personally apologize to you for it.”

Sam never moved from her spot in the seat next to him. She couldn't hardly stop thinking about any of what went down the night before, such that it almost brought a tear to her eye.

“Also—I, uh—” he stammered and then he cleared his throat, “—hate to tell you this, but I'm kinda out of money.”

She turned her attention over to him and frowned.

“What do you mean you're out of money?” she demanded.

“I'm out of money,” he repeated, “well, for now anyway. Remember what I said yesterday, I had enough for breakfast and a cab?”

“Oh, right, right.” She hesitated. “So what's this mean?”

“Well, I have a full tank of fuel to start with,” he stated, to which she frowned and scoffed at that.

“Louie, we're not driving back to Elsinore from here—it's too far.” She was scorn.

“But the train already left, though,” he pointed out. “It's kind of overkill to fly on down to Elsinore, too.”

She sighed through her nose again.

“Don't really feel like driving through the valley, either,” he added.

“Yeah, it's boring as hell,” she said in a soft voice.

“Boring as hell and still hot as fuck, too,” he said, “at least here we have a bit of leeway with the San Francisco fog. Seven hours of nothin'.” He paused for a second. “We could take the coast.”

“That's longer, though,” she pointed out.

“Nicer, though,” he insisted.

“True. It's way nicer, actually.”

“Bet you've missed the Pacific Coast, too,” he said.

“I have—it's one of the many things I haven't been able to do like at all. Especially when I was growing up out here.”

“Really?” Louie was genuinely taken aback by that.

“Yeah.”

“Well, let's—” He set his hand on the ignition key and turned it. “Let's.”

Sam strapped herself in and Louie shook his head of hair about a bit.

“One thing I really wanted to do with Zelda,” he started again as he pulled on the parking lever, “when we were together was go on a road trip with her somewhere. I always considered driving from Providence down to some place like D.C., or go all the way down to like West Virginia. The two of us on a trip together and just hanging out together.”

“What kept you from doing it?” she asked him.

“Touring and making albums—and dealing with record company horse shit in her case—and in my case it was living a double life. There was no way I could do it, not with my other life in full swing.”

They pulled ahead and began up the block, around the cemetery and towards the block on the other side.

“So—I haven't really taken the Pacific Coast Highway much from my place so just kind of—like—bear with me here,” he sputtered.

“It's okay, it's okay.”

Louie glanced over at her at one point as they rolled up to a stoplight.

“You know—and I'm being perfectly honest with you here, Sam—I'm a little intimidated by you,” he confessed.

“You?” she asked him.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I dunno,” he replied with a shake of his head, “but there's just something about you that completely intimidates me. Like it's hard for me to maintain composure when I'm near you.”

“There's no reason to be, though,” she promised him.

“But I feel it anyways, though. It could be because you made a bold move in moving across the country and back again, but I can't really say for sure.”

“Funny you say that 'cause you did that,” she pointed out.

“True. But see, you weren't living a double life like I was.”

“I mean, I kinda am now,” she assured him.

“How so?”

“Joey doesn't know about Bill. He also doesn't know that I'm hanging out with you guys, either. For the record, Bill doesn't know that I'm hanging out with you guys, either. It's like a triangle of sorts with me come to think of it.”

“A delta,” said Louie.

“A delta?”

“Yeah. You know the Greek letter delta?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah!”

“Apparently in the realm of science, it's symbolic of change. Like change in temperature or heat.”

“How do you know that?”

“I dunno if she's shown you this but Morgan—you know, Morgan from the Cherry Suicides—has this old chemistry textbook back at her place. She found it in the garbage believe it or not.”

“Something wrong about that,” Sam declared.

“Oh, yeah. Unless it's actually trash, books do not belong in the trash. But yeah, she found it and I just happened to prop it open one day, and I read a tidbit in a chapter about equations at one point.”

“Huh. Bill has a bunch of old books at his place—mostly old literature, but it's worth a peek, though. I keep meaning to crack them open but I'm not sure where to begin.”

The light turned green and Louie lunged ahead on the street. The clouds hung even lower over them as he merged lanes and they headed for the 880 Freeway. To the right of them was the stretch of gray waters that made up the very Bay itself.

“If you ever come back up here this way,” he started again, “you know you're in a car on the P.C.H., you've got to cross the Golden Gate Bridge at some point. There's just—something majestic about it, even if you've lived here your whole life like the five of us. Well, four of us, anyway, unless Chuck was telling a fib about where he was born. This will take us right by Santa Clara and down to the interchange in San Jose, which'll in turn take us all the way down the coastline to the City of Angels.”

Sam nodded her head and she peered out the windshield to the gray overhead. To think that the assumption with the California coast was all bright sunshine and infinite beaches: it made her laugh the more in which she thought about it.

“What's even the deal with him, anyway?” Louie asked her out of the blue.

“Who, Bill?” She looked over at him with her eyebrows knitted together and he took a glimpse over at her.

“Yeah.”

“Well,” she began, “I mean, you were sitting right there when I called Chuck and told him what was going on.”

“Pff, how could I forget? But what I'm asking is—is there like a time limit with him? Like you signed a marriage contract plus a prenup but surely someone over at the school has to figure that out at some point because it's totally illegal. Setting you up like that and forcing you into something that you had no desire to get into and then threatening a whole bunch of bullshit with you like locking you in your room and forbidding you from going out and visiting people.”

“Well, when I first came out here and I spoke to Marla over the phone—you know, she's been trying to get a job and she finally did with Belinda up in Albany. But she went to the school and she told them that he was still on the payroll. He got fired, Louie, but there was some weird glitch of some sort so he still got paid and he got paid a lot of money, too. So he was able to afford that large house and care for his daughters, such that he enlisted them in a private school.”

“So he loses his paycheck, he's fucked, basically,” he followed along.

“Yeah. Unless he got something to help him out when we weren't looking, he's probably got to pull the girls out of school and sell the house.”

“And what happens to you if and when that happens?” he asked her.

“I—” She froze. Louie glanced over at her with his eyebrows raised. “I—don't know. Oh, wait!” She snapped her fingers.

“What's that?”

“My mom's moving down to the Southland soon. Where exactly is another question, though. She might be going out to Catalina or she might be going to San Pedro, I dunno.”

“Or you can go back to Joey,” he pointed out. “You know, make things easier on your mom. It's another cross country, for sure, but I feel it'd be more beneficial to take that risk again and go with him rather than put extra pressure on your mom like that. But that's my opinion, though. You do whatever you want.”

“There should be a way to null it, too,” she added.

“Yeah, being in a car with another dude,” he joked, and that brought a laugh out of her.

Within time, signs for the interchange came into their view and Louie took the next exit which looped around and met up with the Pacific Coast Highway. Right as they matched up with the pavement, the clouds over them swirled about like the old feathers or the wisps of paint mixed into the wash for a watercolor project. She looked out to the low hills off to the right, all of them different shades of green and yellow. All of them still that rich green despite the late summer. All of them still rich dark green despite the yellow dead grass everywhere. The clouds overhead beckoned rain but at the same time waned away from the coast line.

Such a strange position to be in as was the state of California, but that pocket there, the hills that followed her and Louie all along the highway on that lengthy seven hour drive, reminded her of that special place.

The quiet place. The spot that she and Charlie had found together and the place where she and Joey visited during their final days together.

“This is almost like the precious part of California,” she noted aloud.

“Nah, the eastern Sierra is the precious part of California in my opinion,” he said. “There's something lonely and ancient about the eastern Sierra Nevadas.”

“This whole area here reminds me of a place that Charlie and I found together when they were making the Stormtroopers of Death album,” she followed up.

“Really?”

“It was like this little nook in the trees down the street from the studio,” she explained as she returned her attention to him. “We called it 'the quiet place' because you go in there and it's like completely untouched in comparison to everything else. You walk down the street and you have to duck underneath the trees as you're going in there.”

“Sounds like something you keep a secret,” he remarked.

“I told Joey about it, though,” she told him. “I imagine upstate being covered in places like that.”

“Places you go to that no one else knows about,” he followed along. “This part of California and the eastern Sierra is like that, too. Lots of nooks and crannies and what have you. Like there's a place outside of Salinas—I'll have to show it to you when we get there. It's closer to Monterey Bay, though, which means we'll have to leave this highway, though.”

“It's okay—it'll get us over to the ocean.”

“The ocean makes everything better,” he remarked.

The highway took them down past Morgan Hill and then Gilroy: at one point the road turned towards Monterey Bay; off in the distance loomed those cold dark gray waters that seemed to stretch on forever. The view enlarged as they came closer and closer to the next turn off and the 156: Louie told her it would take them to Highway 1, which would in turn take them to the place he had in mind. At that point, the clouds increased and everything grew dark despite it being almost ten o'clock in the morning.

“While we're over here, you don't mind spending a little money for breakfast, do you?” he asked her at one point.

“Not at all. I was just gonna ask you if you're hungry at all.”

He showed her a grin in response, and then he pointed out the windshield to the next sign up ahead: the town of Castroville as well as the turn off to Highway 1.

“So anyway, this place—it's over by the Salinas River, which eventually heads out to the ocean,” he explained. “When I first met Zelda, and I was waffling on if I wanted to go with her or stay with my concurrent girlfriend and our baby, I always came here. It always helped me clear my head to drive down here when the baby fell asleep and Zelda was back in Rhode Island. I remember staying down here for a full afternoon once. Like I didn't get back home until well after the sun went down. Needless to say, I almost got in trouble for that.”

She laughed at that, and he gave his long smooth hair a little toss back from his face and the side of his neck.

“And the highway will take us all the way down the coastline, too. Take us down to Big Sur and all around the coast, all the way down to San Simeon and Cambria, and then Morro Bay, and then that'll take us over to San Luis Obispo and that's where we meet up with 101 again.”

“And that'll take us all the way back to L.A., too.”

He nodded his head at that, and then Sam cleared her throat.

“I don't think I get Alex,” she confessed.

“A lot of people don't,” he assured her with a straight face.

“It's funny, he said the exact same thing to me,” she recalled. “Word for word.”

“Well, because it's true! A lot of people don't get Alex. That kid is a bundle of contradictions, many of which are not for the faint of heart. I've only known him for a few years but can confirm that, though. And what's mind blowing to me is he's completely aware of it, too. I remember the first time I got into an in-depth conversation with him a few years ago when Testament first formed and we were still Legacy. Sam, I never had such a worse headache.”

“Well, like. For example, when we were in Germany and he and I spent a whole day together—”

“And he missed the train?” he finished for her. “Chuck told me.”

“Yeah, he missed the train and he got upset with me when I tried to grab his attention and get him to come onboard. Then the fireball happened and he realized the error of his ways and we patched it up. And then, you know last night, he opened up the wound over Cliff with me.”

“The fireball happened and what exactly did he do there?”

“I put my arms around him and held him close to me,” she explained. “Wept like a baby right into my chest.”

“He probably liked to feel your chest,” he pointed out.

“What makes you think that?”

“Sam—he's nineteen, soon to be twenty. When I was nineteen, that was all I ever thought about were touching and feeling boobs and clits. We're horny bastards at that age, and I would imagine that he is especially, too. Alex is bit of a nerd—it's the whole thing about how girls don't really talk to nerds.”

“But he's a guitar player, though. I would imagine the girls getting all hot and bothered to guitar players.”

“Not Alex and not our crowds, no. He's like the thinking man's guitarist. I'm sure you've seen him before a television.”

“Oh, yeah, he's all over news reports whenever they come on. Well, I was with you guys in Boston and he and Greg were right before the TV in the room there.”

“Oh, yeah, that's right! But still—at the end of the day, even with his large brain and social scientist parents, he's still a guy. And he probably wanted to feel something soft and warm and comfy.” Louie glimpsed over at her. “You said he was scared, right?”

“Yeah. It was right when that big fireball went up. He just—came over to me and burst into tears at the sight of it. I held him so close to me and I let him weep into my chest.”

“Well—if you see him next time, really pay attention to his behavior towards you,” he advised her. “If he's actually sincere with you, then it's probably because he's confused and his inexperience is showing. If not, like if he gets close to you again, then don't bother with him for a second longer.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I'm saying is he either wants you for you or he's using you,” he explained. “I wish I could tell you more about it, but I'm not Alex, though. I can only tell you what I know from being in between two women for a couple of years.” He shook his hair again and then raked his fingers through one side: outside, the signs for Castroville emerged from the scraggly shrubs on either side of the road.

“I imagine him being soft and sweet, though,” he confessed in a low voice, such that it took her aback to hear that.

“Is—there something about him that you see with him?” she sputtered out as she took a glimpse over at him with a bewildered look on her face. Louie bowed his head and cleared his throat.

“Let me ask you a question,” he said as he leaned his head closer to her.

“Okay.”

“Does it bother you at all—” She could tell that he chose his words with care. “—when a guy finds another guy attractive and it's obvious he's not gay at all?”

She opened her mouth to say something to that, but no sound came out.

“Take as much time as you need to answer that, too,” he assured her, “—I asked Zelda this once and she really had to think about it.”

She thought of all the times that she made art while in class, and she thought of the time that she drew Marla in her journal. It wasn't until she really got to know Marla as well as Belinda when she began to see them as a couple of beautiful women. Indeed, as she thought about their willingness to help her out even while she had posted up out on the West Coast, the more she wondered if the whole thing extended further than their smooth New Yorker skin. Further than Marla's colorful hair and further than Belinda's soft doll like features. There was something more to Alex, much like there was something more to Louie in the seat there next to her, and there had to be something more to herself as well. More to them all, and the fact that she and Louie both had a quiet place, a place where they went that fell on blind eyes, was enough to give her a clue.

The hidden spots and everything in between. It was only the beginning.

And thus it only made sense to her to realize that it resided with everyone, including Alex himself.

“No,” she replied after a long while. “No, it doesn't bother me at all.”

“Okay,” Louie proclaimed as they rolled into Castroville. “Sometimes I look at Alex and I think, 'god, he's a really beautiful boy. I imagine being the perfect cuddler, like he must be adept to snuggling and feeling soft underneath a bunch of blankets.' Not necessarily sexy, although he does have a nice chest and thighs.”

“Nice arms, too,” she said in a soft voice.

“Yeah, he's got those really lanky strong guitar player arms.”

“Hey, you've got nice arms, too, Lewis,” she declared.

“Drummer arms.” He shook his right elbow about: his muscles were tight and sinewy.

“Reminds me of Joey's arms,” she said.

“Oh, yeah, that's right! He's a drummer, too.”

“Drummer and a hockey player.”

Louie took the first exit off into that small town and Sam volunteered to buy the both of them cups of coffee and a couple of scones for themselves: she took a chocolate one where he took a peach one for himself.

Within time, they climbed back into the car and Louie guided her over to the spot in question, right down by the Salinas River and where it widened out before it reached the ocean in small narrow fashion. It was there that the shades of yellow that followed them out of the Bay Area returned to that rich dark green that reminded her of New York. The space in the forest outside of the studio where she and Charlie ventured to together, and then she and Joey visited under a blanket of pure white snow.

“We all have a quiet place,” she declared.

“We really do,” Louie said as he sipped on his coffee.

“We all have a house and a home, even if it isn't physical,” she said.

“Yeah, we all have an attic. We all have secrets. We all have things that we show to everyone.”

“We all have things that we've buried—skeletons in the closet,” she muttered.

“And we all have a quiet place,” he added with a raise of his eyebrows.

He took the next right turn, one that brought them down the Salinas River and away from civilization. All the while, the ponderosa pines stretched high up into the sky around them, all up into those low dark swirling clouds that enveloped them in a blanket of coziness. Soon, the pavement gave way to gravel and broken pieces of pavement itself; and every so often, Sam spotted a series of shrubs all over the places, shrubs with little light pink and pearly white flowers.

“The rhododendrons are still in bloom I see,” Louie remarked.

“I don't think I've actually seen those before,” she confessed; the whole scenery made her think of the hole in the wall back in Ithaca. “They only grow here on the coast and in northern Nevada, we have all manner of pines and trees but nothing like this, though. Nothing as delicate and fluffy as those, though.”

“You guys get oleanders down in the Southland. I've seen those a number of times, they're quite lovely.”

“Oh, yeah. Only drawback with oleanders is they grow like weeds down there. Which is absolutely amazing to me because they're very poisonous.”

“At least it's not strychnine,” he told her. “Strychnine or—better yet deadly nightshade.” And Joey entered her mind right as that final word left his lips. “I don't even know if strychnine grows out here,” he continued.

“Yeah, I don't know, either...” Her voice trailed off at that. She thought about Joey and what he was doing right at that moment. They were still touring over in Europe and they were about to drop their brand new album in the meantime as well. If nothing else when she got back to Lake Elsinore, she had to pick up a copy of that.

She would have to search about for that familiar lettering: she knew it when she saw it.

“There should be a garden somewhere,” he continued, “one full of poison plants.”

“The most dangerous garden in the world,” she declared.

“We should literally call it that.”

“'We'?”

“'They', I should say,” he corrected himself; before them, the little road led to that wide part of the river. Big lush ponderosas as well as oak trees with large wide green leaves the size of dinner plates and tall narrow trees with high canopies surrounded them.

“I was just gonna say—do you really wanna go there, Louie?”

“Unless you wanna.” He tugged on the parking lever and switched off the car. “I ain't gonna do it unless you want to do it.”

“We gotta be careful, though,” she pointed out.

“Oh, absolutely. That's something that's just not for the faint of heart. The quintessential declaration of 'you can look but don't touch'. Might wanna throw in a 'for the love of god' in there, too. 'You can look but for the love of god, do not touch.'”

“'Welcome to Shelley and Clemente's poison garden,'” she declared with a gesture of her hand, “the most dangerous garden on Earth. We've got everything from strychnine to belladonna to oleanders to—whatever else we can find. Have it all together under one umbrella. You and me—we could retire off the profits.”

“You think people would actually pay money to see that?” he asked her, stunned.

“Yeah. People pay money to see the weirdest shit, Louie.”

“Case in point!” He gestured to himself.

“You guys aren't weird,” she assured him.

“Yes, we are. We're as weird as weird can possibly be.” He sipped on his coffee a bit more and then he unbuckled his seat belt. “Anyways, this is where I come to clear my head. I call this place 'the end of the world' 'cause it's far removed away from anything. It's only ten miles back to Castroville but—still.”

They both climbed out of there in unison; Sam peered up to the gray sky overhead and she took in the smell of the salt as it filtered in through the trees before them. The Salinas River flowed right next to the small stretch of gravel and partially collapsed pavement.

“This is like the perfect place for a poison garden,” she told him as he led her to the soft dark river bank.

“Oh, yeah, this lush soil here. Look up the plants and see what kind of environment they thrive in.”

“I do know oleanders like heat,” she told him, “it's why they're everywhere in the L.A. area and in the south, too.”

“Have a special greenhouse for those guys,” he continued as he held his cup of coffee close to his chest. “Kinda clean up the pavement behind us a bit so—Skolnick can drive around on it on his—golf—cart.”

“Shelley and Clemente's poison garden—featuring Alex Skolnick's golf cart.” She laughed at that and he laughed with her.

“Can you imagine Alex on a golf cart?” he asked her, and then he held out his arms, “'oh! Oh god! Oh god here we go!'” And he lowered his voice to where he almost matched Alex's tone.

“Four wheelin' on a golf cart,” she laughed some more.

“Hey, Alex! Take it easy, little man!” Louie lowered his voice to a near whisper. “There's stuff in here that'll kill you faster than you can say your middle name!” He shook his head and chuckled some more, and then he took another sip of his coffee.

“So what's the quiet place like?” he asked her as they neared the river's edge.

“In upstate?”

“Yeah.”

“It's about like this, without the river, of course. There was another spot that Joey and I went to when Stormtroopers were in Ithaca a few summers ago—right by the water's edge at the one lake—one of the Finger Lakes that's there. It kind of reminds me of that, like I'm getting the same feeling as that.”

They stopped at the water's edge and Sam leaned out a little bit for a view beyond the trees. The stretch of rich black and gray that was the Pacific Ocean, a mere stone's throw up ahead of them. Even though Louie had a different opinion, Sam couldn't help but feel that there was something prehistoric about this part of the river; something precious and untouched.

“Sometimes, when it's a bit sunnier out,” he started again, “I'll kneel down to the waters here and search around for insects and rocks and stuff. There's a lot of bizarre life here that's endemic only to this part of the river and as far as I know, the whole state.”

“Kind of like a 'keep it forever' sort of thing,” she noted.

“Exactly, right. Keep this whole place hidden away from the world so as to protect it from everything and everyone. Eastern Sierra is the same way. Exact same way.” He sipped on his coffee once again.

“C'mon, I think it's gonna rain—I feel it.”

They returned to the car and sure enough, as Louie fired it up again and they made a turn back at the dead end and proceeded back up the pavement, the first large drops of rain pattered on the roof and the windshield. It would be some time before they reached the Highway 1 once again, but once they did, Sam wondered as to how far they could go without seeing another sliver of civilization between Monterey Bay and the next spot on the coast.

To the left of them stood the high sea cliffs in all their withered and eroded glory, strong and high over their heads, much stronger and higher than the buildings back in New York City or Los Angeles or even San Francisco itself. To the right stood the ocean: the gray and black waters that went on forever into the horizon. Empty and cold, and cradled by the clouds over them. Everything gray and black.

Every so often, Sam peered down to the waves down below as they crashed on the rocks. She looked to the left once again: every so often in the cliffs, a minute ponderosa jutted out from the cracks as if it gasped for the fresh oceanic air. The coast line seemed to stretch on for infinity before them. She glanced over at Louie and the serene expression on his face.

He was her drummer in that moment.

She turned her attention back out to the ocean beyond them as they went around a corner. Maybe it was the lack of anything discernible on the cliffs or the fact that the ocean appearead so endless beyond them, but something about all of this made her squirm in her seat.

Louie's occasional peers down to the gages behind the steering wheel didn't help, either.

An eternity in such a small pocket of the coastline. They really were at the end of the world.

A sign emerged on the side of the road but she had no idea what it read.

“We probably should've stopped for gas in Castroville,” he told her at one point.

“Why, are we low?” she asked him as her heart skipped a beat.

“Sorta. I hope. I don't really know the economy on this thing—I don't really pay attention to that sort of thing.”

They rounded another corner and Louie drummed his fingers on the steering wheel: that time they had a full view of the ocean. The grand view of the waves as they welcomed her to the end of the world, and they were about to run out of gas as far as she knew right then.

Another sign emerged from behind the guard rail and that time she saw that they were ten miles from the central part of the coast.

“Mother fucker!” he spat under his breath.

“It's okay—we're almost to San Simeon,” she told him.

“Yeah, I know—I'm still kicking myself, though. We'll probably gonna coast there the rate we're going at right at the moment.”

“Seriously?” she demanded, shocked.

“Yeah!”

She closed her eyes and she thought of Joey over in Europe. The only thing that seemed worse than losing Cliff to a bus accident that was far beyond her control was her being stranded on the Central California coast and not being able to tell anyone. But then again, they were close to the next piece of civilization.

“As long as we don't drive into the ocean, I think we'll be fine,” she told him.

“We don't drive into a—poison garden,” he muttered as they went around yet another bend in the road: the cliffs soon began to lower away to the sight of more ponderosas and scraggly shrubs.

“There's no poison gardens here,” she assured him.

“You sure? 'Cause like—there's a bend here—and another here—it's like this.”

They rounded a corner as it wound around the coastline: the road dipped inward into a gentle curve and they doubled back to the next crevice in the landscape.

“Sit—” He pointed to the left. “—down—” He pointed to the right. “—sit—down—sit—down—poison garden.” He pointed straight ahead at that last part and she chuckled at that.

Sure enough, the car sputtered a bit right outside of San Simeon: Hearst Castle rose up off in the distance but they had no time to visit right at that moment.

“Told ya we'd have to coast,” he told her as he guided the car to the gas station right there at the edge of town. The engine sputtered again and died right as they coasted into the first spot near the driveway. He let out a low whistle and leaned back in his seat.

“That was close,” she remarked.

“Yeah, I'll say,” he breathed, and then he turned his attention to her. “A twenty'll get us to the heart of Lost Angles and it'll get me up the Grapevine and into the Central Valley.”

“You're not gonna hang out there with me?”

“I can't,” he told her. “We're supposed to make a new album ourselves.”

“Oh, yeah, that's right!” She handed him a twenty dollar bill, followed by another which would ensure him a ride back home to the Bay Area.

Once they were filled up, they returned to the road.

“I don't know if Hearst Castle is even open,” Louie confessed.

“I don't, either. It's getting kind of late in the day, too.”

“Yeah, exactly!”

Some more coastline and they found their way down into Solvang and then San Luis Obispo where they were met with the Pacific Coast Highway yet again, and they moved away from the end of the world. So much that she wanted to show to Joey. And so much that she wished Cliff could see again, especially that one stretch of the highway where everything felt so finite and endless at the same time.

They wound their way through the low foothills and yet another unknown pocket of California, until they skirted the outside of Santa Barbara followed by Carpinteria.

The waves down below thrashed even more as they wound along the cliffs towards Ventura. At that point, the sky began to darken with the setting sun on the other side of the blanket of clouds overhead.

“Part of me wants to go down to the beaches here,” Louie confessed to her. “Like—take a walk on one of the beaches here. Yet another thing I wanted to do with Zelda when we were together.”

“We don't have towels, though,” she pointed out.

“And it's cold, too!”

“Right!”

The highway led them into Camarillo and then the heart of Los Angeles, where it ended and became the 210. At that point, night was about to fall over them, and the feeling of dread washed over Sam herself. She knew that Bill would be furious by the mere sight of her walking through that front door without any sort of explanation.

Louie drove them down to Corona and then the hills which cradled Lake Elsinore away from the rest of the region. The clouds had finally dissipated and gave way to a violet and orange sky overhead. Such a great length of time to be in that car with him and a part of her wished they had more time.

More time together. More time to relish over the idea of the poison garden.

But that time was all they had right then and there, much like that stretch of highway that overlooked the ocean.

She guided him to the house by the lake and within time, she recognized the neighborhood in question.

He pulled up to the curb and she sighed through her nose at the realization. Her head spun a bit from having driven such a great distance but at least they could come to a stop on a steady piece of ground. She looked on at the house, with its windows dark and the shades pulled despite the fact that it wasn't that late in the evening.

“Do you need any help?” he offered her, to which she shook her head. Instead, she sighed through her nose again and she climbed out to fetch her things out of the back seat. She decided to give her mother a ring later that night when Bill and the girls had gone to bed, that is if they already did. She hoisted her overnight bag over her shoulder and she held her purse close to her body as she reached the driver's side window. He rolled it down so she could speak to him one last time.

“Louie?”

He leaned closer to the window with his eyebrows raised.

“Thank you,” she said to him in a soft voice, and he showed her a sweet smile.

“It's my pleasure,” he told her with a wink. “Poison garden.”

“Poison garden,” she echoed him with a smile on her face.

“Also—”

She stopped and he gestured for her to come on closer to him.

“Don't worry, I'll—I'll talk to him,” he vowed to her.

“Who?”

“You know. The little man.”

“Oh, him!” She stopped right in her tracks. “What for?”

“Just to see if he's alright. One thing I've noticed about him when he fucks up something—he's real hard on himself. So if it's kinda messed between the two of you, I'll check in on him. I'll check in on him anyways.”

“Good plan,” she told him. “You be safe going back up, alright?”

“You be safe, too. Poison garden!”

Sam stepped away from the car and she turned back to the house, still in one place. Louie drove away right then and he disappeared around the corner. Another seven hours and he'd be back up there. She returned to the front door of the house and she opened it with ease. Silence.

She knew that he wouldn't do it. Sam shook her head and she bowed upstairs to her room.

#fanfic #fanfiction #chapter 11 #book four #souls of black #fever in fever out #fever in fever out fanfic #testament fanfic #testament band #testament #louie clemente #oc tag #long reads #friendship #also on ao3 #also on wattpad #slice of life #writing #text

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theparaminds · 6 years ago

Photo

A new face in music, Binki is exactly what many have been looking for but have been unable to find. His style contrasts a stark relaxation in sonics with an introspective understanding of lyrics and emotion.

An theatre student, Binki truly understands what it takes to connect with an audience, what it takes to express emotion honestly and how to be a truthful soul within sound itself. His first song, Marco, does so perfectly, reminding us of youthful innocence and the troubles that come with it.

In his first interview ever, Binki tells us of his baggings and what it took to make the jump into music, as well as has upcoming move to New York set to put a lot into focus.

PM: First question as always, how’s your day going and how have you been?

It’s been pretty uneventful. I had to go to court earlier for this speeding ticket, but other than that I've just been cooling. Later I’m gonna go jam with my buddy though.

PM: For those who don’t know, who is Binki? What does he represent and what is his vision?

Yeah I'm pretty sure nobody knows me! Binki was actually my nickname growing up, not really sure how it came to be, but it stuck. I recently decided to release music as Binki to remind myself to not be too self-serious with my music. I definitely care about what I'm doing but if it's not fun then what's the point? Overall though, I want to make music that connects and makes people days easier.

PM: What was the spurring moment that really told you to start releasing music as opposed some odd demos here and there?

A few things, but my brother played a big part in it all. He would always gas me up when I showed him a song he thought was good. I always had desire to go full tilt with the music but I always held myself back. I was in school studying theatre and acting for the past 4 years; and I had it in my head that I couldn't do both for some reason. I thought people wouldn't take my acting seriously if I had this music career on the side. But life's really too short to not do the things you love. There's also plenty of people who have done both successfully. It was really just fear.

PM: Were there others around you inspiring you to push into musical ventures?

Yeah, there's definitely a "house show" scene at the school I went to. I was definitely inspired because I wanted to be a part of it and perform. I also really enjoy live music. I didn't have a band though, and it's really hard to get people excited to hear some random dude perform over an instrumental.

PM: To move a little back to the past, what did your environment and location look like growing up and how did it manifest into your sound and style?

Suburbs as fuck. I spent my early years in Hershey, Pennsylvania. A lot of white people and not a ton of culture. I wasn't miserable though, I had a lot of friends and I was outside playing most of the time. My brother put me onto a lot of stuff growing up, but in highschool I kinda veered off into my own lane. I remember this girl I had a crush on showed me Pink Floyd, which spiraled into me listening to a lot of classic rock. Then in college, I watched this Jimi Hendrix documentary, which is no longer on Netflix unfortunately. But after that, I started learning how to play guitar. I don't know though, the internet kinda changed the way everyone consumes music and other people's culture. I feel like it's super valuable for artists who might feel like they're in a bubble geographically. I'm moving to NYC in like 2 weeks though so we'll see how that changes things.

PM: What’re some of your fears and aspirations with living in new york? What is it you hope to find in the city you wouldn’t find anywhere else?

It's actually just starting to hit me that I'm moving to NYC. It's something I've always wanted, feels a bit surreal. I guess a fear would be that the city will just expose me as a talentless hack and I'll have you move back to the burbs. Or that it'll take me 20+ years to make it. I'm really not afraid of much at the moment. I feel like a big part of being successful in any field, especially creative endeavors, is just being bold enough or naive enough to think you have something to add. So many people give up before they even try. My goals are pretty nebulous at the moment. I really just wanna connect and collaborate with talented artists. I'd love to perform my music in some capacity, that's been the mission for awhile. NYC represents opportunity in my mind. There's an energy. If you live there, you might inherently have it. If you move there you're looking for something, and you gotta be driven to survive there. I'm looking for that energy.

PM: On the topic of the music itself, how have you come to develop your sound over time? What changes are you working on and improvements as time goes?

Most definitely still developing my sound. I think the best thing has been working with different people. The same way you communicate with other artists if you're having a jam. I think my writing changes when I'm exposed to different sounds. I never understood when artists say they only listen to their own music when they are creating, I can respect it, but I feel like I'd lose my mind if I tried that. I take pieces from all of my favorite artists, but it's all filtered through me so it's always gonna sound like me. Going forward I just want to keep taking risks and remain ambitious. I'll always want my music to be enjoyable. Not commercial necessarily, but I don't want my music to live in a bubble where only a select few enjoy it. That said I really want to do a concept album at some point, something along the lines of My Beautiful Dark Fantasy.

PM: What is about the concept album that you love and why is the idea of making one appealing to you as an artist?

When it's done well, it adds another layer to the music. Also albums are just in a strange place right now. I really hate this trend of artists releasing 30+ songs and calling it an album. Something really cold about it. I think concept albums, and more ambitious video projects, show a different level of passion. Even when done poorly, I'm like: “okay there's intention behind this.”

PM: What’re some of your personal ambitions and goals going forward? Do any include live shows?

The biggest one is to just put out music that I'm proud of. There will be live shows in 2019. I'm kinda just speaking that into existence but it can't be that hard right? Even if it's just like 20 people, that'd be tight. I'd love to go on tour eventually. Also more videos! My brother and I made the video for "Marco" in like 48 hours with no plan. So we just want to keep getting better and stay consistent.

PM: Tell me more about that Marco shoot, how did come together and how did it conceptualize through the day?

So I called off work and drove down to Atlanta, we started just shooting random bits around my brother's apartment complex. Then we just bounced around the city starting at a museum, then a park, and we ended at dance party. It was a super fun day, it felt like we really had something. The next day I said we should get a shot of me falling in a pool. Totally inspired by the 'Untitled' video by Rex Orange County. I didn't think we'd get any shots of me underwater though because we were shooting on an iPhone. My brother was like "I'm pretty sure this is water proof." I was like, I don't know man but we ended up just going for it. We got the shots and then his phone died. He plugged it up to charge and then the screen started glitching and shit. I was so hurt man, I thought we lost all the footage, but like thirty minutes later it started working again and we transferred everything to his laptop. It was wild, I'd never seen a phone come back to life after something like that. After that shoot, everything kinda shifted for me. I was like "oh, I can really just do this shit." Been riding that wave ever since.

youtube

PM: That’s an amazing story. Do you have a best memory of the last year, if it’s possible for you to pinpoint?

When I went to NYC in March. That was pretty dope, but to be honest, I feel like releasing Marco might be the highlight. The response has been wild. This Russian YouTuber put it on his playlist and now there's a bunch of people in Russia playing my music. Crazy. It's one thing for your friends and family to support you but getting support from strangers, people with no stake in my well-being, is the best feeling. I don't know if I've ever felt that to this extent.

PM: And as a final question, if you could recommend one movie to everyone reading currently, what would it be and why?

Well my favorite movie is "Superbad," but I feel like everyone's seen that right? So I'll go with "Rushmore." The main character in that movie is full of contradictions and on the surface he's pretty shitty. But you root for him, and you understand why he is the way he is by the end of the film. I feel like the world is lacking empathy right now. It also has Bill Murray in it so that's a plus

PM: Do you have anyone to shoutout or anything to promote? The floor is yours!

Yeah! shouts out to Chasen, Justin, and Sam for helping me make this shit. Also big shoutout to Raymond & Jerry! And check out "Marco" if you haven't yet!

Follow Binki On instagram

Listen on Soundcloud and Spotify

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thedeanthomas · 7 years ago

Text

Expectations and Reality || AU

It’s been days. It has to have been. Dean has barely moved from the bed, ordering take away pizzas to sustain himself. He doesn’t think, all he does is sleep and zone out to Office reruns on Netflix, trying to keep himself as numb as possible so he doesn’t break down again. Shay’s Smiths t shirt is in a crumpled pile in the corner of the room, Dean had thrown it there that first morning when he’d woken up. He hits the power button on his phone and gets the dead battery icon. With a sigh, Dean rummages around for his charger, plugging it in. As soon as it gets the juice, his phone blows up with notifications he’d been ignoring. He has 18 missed called and 158 texts. He groans when he opens his texting app and sees that at least half of them have to be from his mum.

Dean hits call and throws the phone on his bed with speaker on. He tries to stay awake as his mum shouts at him for disappearing, then he comforts her dully as she weeps about some nonsense with thinking he was dead.

“You’re not alone, are you? Dean, you can’t be alone right now-“ She rambles on for several minutes, but Dean knows she’s right. His mum knows him well enough to know that that’s what he defaults to when he’s upset.

“…we’ve been praying for you Dean and…”

And at the same time she didn’t know a single thing about him.

“I’m fine mum.”

“Seamus is with you still?”

That hits him like a thousand bricks to his chest. Of course she didn’t know. Why the hell would she know. He’s supposed to be torn up over Lavender, mourning the future of married life, suffering the humiliation of being jilted-it was there, but it was nothing compared to the fog of hurt, anger, confusion that he’d spent the past 72 hours in. He’d lose Lavender a hundred times over if it meant Seamus would come back. But he can’t even begin to conceptualize how he’d explain this to his mother. He didn’t even know where she stood on gay people, not really….not that Dean was gay people. God, was Dean gay people? No. No he wasn’t. He liked women. What happened just happened because he was drunk. But that didn’t make explaining this any easier to his mom.

“Dean?”

“Yeah. Yeah he’s around. Just stepped out for a smo-food. He’s getting food.”

Dean didn’t need a cigarette lecture on top of everything else. For a few seconds, he lets himself believe it-that Shay would be showing up in his apartment with eggrolls and one of those trash magazines he read ‘ironically’, throwing himself on the couch…throwing himself on Dean….no.

“I have to go mum. Okay?”

He’d cut her off in the middle of something, but he didn’t apologize.

“Okay. Many happy returns. Namaste.”

“Yep. Ditto.”

“You call me if you need me?

He did need her. He needed her to be who she was when it was just her and him, when they were poor, when she didn’t speak with the affected uppity accent. When she knew him. When Dean could tell her anything. When she would’ve been here, waiting for him, instead of hours away tending to her perfect replacement family.

She didn’t need Dean anymore. That was the problem.

“Sure mum. Bye.”

His plans already disrupted, Dean lets his phone charge and drags himself into the shower, trying to zone out in the water, but it doesn’t work. His thoughts keep drifting to Seamus, to the large loss of him obviously, but Dean can’t quite get other thoughts out of his head. How Shay had tasted….how he’d looked when Dean had been on his knees in front of him…

Dean grunts pinches the skin on his arm to distract himself from getting hard. God. What the hell was wrong with him? He smacks the side of the shower wall and feels better when his hand starts to smart. Good. Something to feel other than fucking sad and like a fucking girl.

He gets out the shower and paces around in his towel, suddenly needing to get out. It’s eleven in the morning. Luna should be awake. Dean checks his phone. It’s…how the hell was it Thursday? Didn’t they get back on Sunday? Whatever. It didn’t matter.

“Hello?”

“Hey it’s-“

“Oh so now you can fucking call me, hmm? Come on, Thomas! We thought you died.”

Luna’s hint of an Irish accent deepens whenever she’s mad.

“No you didn’t. I live across the hall, numpty. You’ve seen lights on.”

“My point still stands. Don’t fucking do that.”

“Sorry.”

“So what have you been-“

“Want to go out tonight? You can bring Ginny if you want.”

“Er, sure. She’s got practice tonight and she usually just crashes atAngelina’s after because it’s closer, so it’ll just be you me and Shay.”

God. It stings. He wants to cry. He hates himself. He wants to punch something. A thousand more emotions hit him at once and Dean locks them away, and his voice is flat when he speaks.

“Shay isn’t coming.”

“Why?”

“I’ll be round at eight okay?”

“Dean Malcom Thomas. Talk to me.”

“I’m going back to bed, Lune. I’ll see you at eight?”

“I’m mad at you.”

“Bu I’ll see you at eight?”

“….I’ll see you at eight.”

He didn’t lie to her. Satisfied, naked, Dean falls back onto the bed. It’s hours later when his text tone pulls him out of sleep.

Luna: What the hell happened with you two?

Dean starts to type

Dean: We got drunk at the club in Greece, and we were trying to get me laid, or at least someone to make out with. Shay kissed me because we couldn’t find anyone, and then I kissed him. Then we sucked each other off. Then he fucked me. And I liked it. Then he left me. Then I got drunk and called him a whore when he came back and I don’t think he’s ever going to talk to me again-ok?

He hits the backspace button so fast his phone glitches for a second. Then he types again.

Dean: had a massive blow up. I think we’re done. Shay hasn’t talked to me since. And I don’t care.

Luna: Yes you do.

Dean: Sure. Look, I just want to get drunk and find a girl tonight, okay? Can we focus on that?

Luna sends him an excessive amount of the eye roll emojis, and the rest of the afternoon passes in the same haze he’d been living in. Around 7, Dean takes the time to pick out his clothes carefully, settling on a royal blue sport coat, white button up and dark jeans. He expects Luna to berate him for his outfit choice, but when he knocks on her door, it flies open and her arms are around him instantly. Dean would normally resist, pull away even, but he just accepts the affection, gently hugging her back. He’d forgotten how nice human contact could be.

“What was that for?” He asks as he lets her go. Dean tries to smile at her but he knows it looks fake.

“You needed it, mate. After everything that happened.”

“I told you. I don’t care about Shay.”

Luna raises an eyebrow.

“I was talking about Lavender.”

Dean looks away from her.

“Oh. Right. Well I’ve ordered a car it should be here so-“

“Right.”

Luna stands next to him at the bar. They’re about three shots in.

“You look hot by the way.” She says this as she plays with the lapel on his jacket. The compliment surprises Dean and he smiles at her for real this time.

“Really?”

She rolls her eyes.

“Yes, Thomas. If I wasn’t with someone, I’d pity fuck you.”

He laughs, and she does too. He’d asked her for that once, when he was really drunk the first year of Uni and it’d turned into a sort of in joke. Dean takes a long swig of his beer.

“So….you on your own in the apartment?”

Dean won’t ask about him. Not directly. Luna nods.

“Shay hasn’t been round, no. Asked me to tell him when you were going to be out.”

He ignores that and how much that hurts.

“So Gin isn’t moving in?”

“Er….no. She can’t afford it. Neither can I really, on my own. If I can’t find someone I might have to move.”

That surprises Dean. They hardly live anywhere extravagant. Dean preferred it that way, though Lavender had been harping him to move somewhere nicer after the wedding. He didn’t need much, not really, and even though his stepdad always paid for everything, Dean didn’t like to take advantage of that, even when he should. An idea pops into his head before he can stop himself.

“Let me.”

Luna scoffs, not understanding.

“What, drunkie?”

Dean grabs her hand.

“Its er-partially my fault you don’t have a roommate now, and it’s definitely my fault you lost your first one at least. Let me pay your rent. Please. It’ll make me feel better.”

Luna laughs.

“You’re the strangest person I’ve ever met, you know that?”

Dean throws his arms out in front of him.

“What?”

“You’re going to sugar daddy my lesbian relationship because you feel bad?”

“Yeah.”

“And you don’t see what’s weird about that?”

Luna does another one of the shots set in front of them.

“Only you saying the word ‘daddy’.”

Luna chokes on the shot and coughs, glaring at him. Dean pats her back.

“Sorry, mate.”

“You should be.”

He flags the bartender for water before turning towards her again.

“So will you let me or no?”

She raises her eyebrows.

“You serious? This isn’t just drunk Dean talking?”

Dean thrusts his arms forward and dramatically mimics a sobriety test.

“I’m not that drunk. But I am that serious.”

“Dean!”

She presses a kiss to his cheek.

“Normally I wouldn’t let you…but god, I want to live with my girlfriend. Ooh. Sorry.”

Luna’s eyes grow large as she realizes what she’s said. Dean shrugs.

“Don’t be. But I’m serious. Seriously.”

Luna’s face breaks out into a grin.

“I’m gonna go call her and tell her the good news. Also…” She jerks her head slightly to the right. “It’s looking like I’ll see you in the morning. Let me know if you need clean up crew.”

Dean laughs as she walks away. He sips on his beer for maybe 30 seconds before new company joins him.

She’s gorgeous. He hates himself for noticing how similar she looks to Lavender, but this girl’s hair is cropped short and her lips are fuller. She smiles at him and Dean notices her eyes are a lot kinder than Lav’s hand been in years.

“Hi.”

She’s American. That surprises him.

“Hi.”

“Um…was that your girlfriend?”

She’s bold. Drunkenly bold, she glances over at her group of friends and they all giggle. Dean smiles, feeling anticipation build in his stomach.

“No. Not at all. She’s on her way to call her girlfriend.”

“Oh. Great. I’m Rowan.”

“Dean.”

“Hi Dean.” She smiles, getting just a touch closer to him.

“Hi.”

“You can buy me a drink now, if you want.”

Dean laughs.

“Well I think I want to, but it depends on something.”

“Hmm?”

“Are you as fun as you are pretty?”

She blushes but laughs.

“Definitely.”

“Then, definitely.”

Rowan’s lips tickle his neck as Dean fumbles with his keys in the doorway.

“You live alone?”

She says this between kisses, sucking a hickey on his neck.

“….yeah.”

They open the door and Dean barely gets it shut behind him before Rowan’s all over him. She’s practically climbing the front of him, and Dean takes the hint, lifting her up easily. She’s so little, she about the same shape as someone else who had recently wrapped his legs around Dean’s waist. A groan escapes him at the memory, and Rowan smiles against his lips. Dean grabs her jean covered ass as they walk into the bedroom, and when Dean falls back onto the bed, he gropes her breasts through her blouse. As Rowan gets settled on top of him, Dean’s hands run up the back of it and undo her bra, slipping his hands up through the front of her shirt after. She moans into his mouth as his thumbs graze her nipples and Dean bites her bottom lip in return. He massages her breasts as she undoes the buttons on his shirt, and he moves his arms to pull off his jacket and shirt. Rowan pulls her own shirt off, flinging her bra aside, and Dean tries not to show disappointment. He liked undressing women, the moment of anticipation just before you get to see her...it’s like magic. He notices her pale chest is dotted with beauty marks, and it’s endearing. He traces a finger over one of them and she shivers.

Rowan climbs onto his lap and kisses him greedily, gyrating against him as she kisses down his neck again. Dean pushes back up towards her, moaning, but uh....

It’s not working. He’s only half hard. And Dean knows Rowan notices.

“Sorry, ‘m a little drunk.”

He says this against her lips and she smiles.

“I can fix that. Lay back.”

Her telling him what to do does make his hips twitch.

“You don’t have to...”

She pushes him on his back and starts kissing down his neck, down his chest, and she sucks a hickey on his hip before answering.

“I want to, yeah? I bet your dick is huge.”

She’s trying to be sexy, but it just makes feel gross to have her talk to him like that-still, Dean grins at her as she starts to take off his pants and briefs, watching, propped up on his elbows.

“You American girls are different, yeah?”

She licks a stripe on the underside of his cock and smiles at the immediate effect of it.

“Oh, you have no idea, baby.”

Baby.

Dean groans again at the memory of Seamus instead of what Rowan is doing to him now. It’s just dark enough and her hair is short and dark-Dean’s mind slips easily back to Greece, to Shay calling him baby-Shay swallowing all of him .Rowan’s pace is quicker and...wetter, but it works. Dean closes his eyes and loses himself, growing harder and harder until--

“Do you have a condom?”

“Nightstand.”

He stays on his back as she goes to find one, giving his cock a few pumps with her hand before she puts it on him. He feels himself soften at her touch but he thinks of Shay and fixes his problem. God, what the fuck was his problem? This absolutely stunning girl absolutely desperate for him, sucking him off, and Dean has to think about getting fucked by his best friend to stay hard?

Maybe...maybe he liked men.

It’s the first time he lets himself think that, really, soberly and truthfully, and Dean knows its true. He wasn’t not attracted to Rowan, it was just-there was a large part of him, larger than he’d known actually, that wanted to be taken care of. Used. Praised. And he wanted a man-Seamus preferably, but he’d bungled that quite nicely-to do that to him.

If only he hadn’t had this realization with a woman on his lap. Rowan’s trying to fuck herself on his cock, but it’s not going to happen-and they both know it.

“Dean?”

“Can you uh-can you get off of me?”

She does, looking at him strangely.

“You okay?”

Dean breaks eye contact, looking over the side of the bed for his underwear

“I uh--no. Sorry. I think you should go.”

She makes a noise of surprise.

“Seriously?”

Is she annoyed? Dean glances at her. She’s definitely annoyed. In the light from his lamp that he’s turned on, she’s not nearly as pretty as she looked in the bar. Though that might be her personality.

“....yeah.”

“You won’t even like, go down on me or something? I only have two more nights in London.”

That annoys him.

“Am I a tourist attraction?”

She ignores him, putting her clothes back on in a huff.

“Thanks for nothing.”

“Anytime.”

That pisses her off.

“What, are you gay or something?”

“I-”

Dean laughs, even though it’s not funny.

“I think so, actually. Yeah.”

She walks away,not looking back, but Dean doesn’t care. For once, someone was leaving because it was what he wanted. Dean could get used to getting what he wanted. When he hears his front door slam, he grabs his phone,opens his messages with Shay and starts to type.

Dean: I’m sorry. I miss you. I want you

He hits delete.

Dean: I just tried to fuck a girl and all I could think about was you

Delete

Dean: will you come over and fuck me? we don’t even have to look at each other.

Delete

Dean: I just want to kiss you again.

That’s it. That’s whats so brilliantly pathetic about all of this. Dean wants affection, tenderness, softness from Shay. The opposite of everything he deserves. He deletes the message from his phone and closes it. He sighs and falls back onto the pillows after pulling his briefs back on, glad Rowan left him alone with his thoughts. Even if he can’t get what he wants, at least Dean can get some sleep. Despite it all, he smiles slightly to himself. He was right-picking up a girl did make him feel a little better. Just not in the way he had expected.

#drabble #:/#luna #rowan #seamus #au

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life-in-a-labrynth · 4 years ago

Text

This is going to be kind of ridiculous, and I shouldn't preface all of my journal entries that begin that way. I'm so self-conscious. Sorry about that.

But so I... somehow got onto the topic of noise-canceling headphones. I think I was simply curious about how they work and wanted a deeper understanding. After reading up on sound waves and inverse frequencies, I must have thought of how a colleague of mine wears noise-canceling headphones. I thought it was odd he should wear them around the office. Surely he wasn't just listening to music all the time?

And the wikipedia entry mentioned how some people wear them to hear others better. And I thought that they may be a godsend, because *I* have trouble hearing people. It used to drive my ex Angela crazy. And I'm wondering now, when did this start?

When did I become insecure about asking people to repeat themselves? Or feeling self-conscious that sometimes, I kind of smile and nod, and there's a delay in what people tell me to my understanding them. A few moments later I'll say to them "oh oh oh THAT, yes, of course".

That can't be a technical glitch, can it? It's a disability. I have ADD. It's likely been with me my whole life. I may be on the autism spectrum. It's a troubling and excessively depression thing to grapple with. One I've tried to deny for many years. And am still denying. Please note that denial doesn't necessarily signal whether a thing is true or not, even though it has those connotations.

Spoken like a true person in denial, heh. But it's crushing me, because what does it all come down to? That I feel like an unlovable freak. That I feel inferior to others. Just some big retard, am I right? And oh yes, you know this was amplified by me having my heart broken by Dawn. Fucking cunt.

I'm still in so much pain from it. I hope I can escape it soon. But dealing with this is just bringing everything back up to the forefront. Not sure what to do. What CAN I do, but accept this?

Okay so, I tried calling a hearing clinic. I left a message to book an appointment to get to the bottom of things. One thing, I remember that I got my ears cleaned out a few years ago and it DEFINITELY did improve my hearing. Whether it improved how well I understood people is a different matter entirely. It didn't.

When did I get them cleaned? I can't remember exactly, but it was around the time that I met a girl named Alyssa, because I met her at the clinic where I had it done, and was so bold as to ask her for her number. I did it on impulse. It worked. Go me.

So anyway, this was after Trump was elected and I vowed to take a break from all social media and news. And I remember feeling bummed out because I wanted to hang out with Alyssa, but her and her friend (Mary?) were down at the shore, and were texting me. And for one reason or another I became defensive and suspicious of them, like they were only texting me to tease me, and I felt left out and unloved, and... it's very toxic, in retrospect.

But I remember them texting me while I was reading Lord of the Rings, or some other book I wanted to catch up on in lieu of my usual distractions. Oh right, it was Fellowship of the Ring, probably around the time that Frodo and the gang nearly got eaten by trees that put them to sleep with some kind of sonorous sound.

Sorry for the aside, I think little derails like that are funny. So anyway, I got my ears cleaned around then, and it must have been around late November, early December 2016. I asked out Angela in March 2017. So are we to say that only after 3 months, my ears again became so clogged, that I had trouble hearing her for that reason?

No. It's a cognitive disorder. And I'm holding onto hope that it's unrelated to autism. Though the fact that I DO have diagnosed ADD can't be a coincidence. It must be co-morbid with that.

As an aside, my ears ARE mad clogged again, and I need to get them cleaned out. I blame scuba diving last May. Bla-glock.

Okay, so, now what? I think I only wanted to write this entry because I was getting distressed about god damn Dawn again. If I were to get diagnosed with some kind of autism (unlikely that they would even venture a diagnosis like that, but nevertheless), I would have to keep it as my most guarded secret.

I'm a quirky person, that's out the debate. Cunt even told me, after demeaning me, that I'm just quirky and a big weirdo but she loved me anyway. It's tough to not see her as sinister, but I don't think it so. I've never thought she acted with malice when she criticized me, then felt bad, and tried to make me feel better by saying it didn't matter, because she still loved me.

I shouldn't have listened to her. "Love" was meaningless, because by that point, she already knew we weren't going to work out. And tried to bullshit me (and herself), two months later, by saying "well I mean I DO love you, I just don't think we'll work out". Or she tried to pretend there's a middle ground between romantic love and platonic love. I'm not buying it.

I shouldn't be dwelling on this. It's just making me stressed out and depressed. But what else can I do? I feel like there's more to explore here. I brushed against it above. Where my mind might now be finally ready to accept that Dawn isn't some villain. I mean... I already know that. It's just, it's so much easier for me, emotionally, to paint her that way.

Next step? Realizing that all her criticisms were founded, oh stop! Bullshit, Dan, don't go back there. I'm not re-litigating this. She's a crazy bitch, her judgments of me were fictional, and there's something seriously wrong with her.

Yeah, there were certain times we didn't see eye-to-eye, but the way she busted my balls over it was uncalled for and disproportional. Fuck, man. Thoughts flooding back. That whole "u are teh autistic/adhd/whatever the fuck" conversation was spawned because she just told me that my trip was "comically poorly planned". And criticized me for not listening to her. And making a mountain out of a molehill. And ignoring counter-facts to what she said, i.e. confirmation bias.

Ugh. I feel ill. Okay, let's pull back. I just need to know I'm not some unloveable freak for the way I am. Okay, Dan, why don't you pose that question to other people you've met? No one else thinks that. Do you REALLY think that all the girls you've went on dates with, think that? Do you think Laura thought that way? How about Mary? How about Tinder Travel Girl? How about Jackie? How about Jewish Pizza girl?

Mehhh, you're not wrong, but they didn't get to know me deeply.

Look, if you were some unlovable freak by the way you keep painting yourself out to be, don't you think they would have noticed pretty quickly upon meeting you? Instead of being charmed by you? Laura had a whole week to lose interest, and not look really disappointed when you told her that you didn't want to date her.

Jackie, Jamie, that girl who took you home and had a dog... why did all these girls jump your bones on the first date? You're just such an unlovable freak, Dan! All the true blue sweaty neckbeards living in their basements would kill to have that kind of body count. You think incels are unlovable bastards? They only get that way from telling themselves that, otherwise they'd be perfectly normal people. YOU'RE DOING GREAT.

Do you think Elisabeth thought you were some unlovable freak? (wish I hadn't fucked that up, sigh). Elisabeth was highly intelligent - hell, read her blog! So why do you want to take the opinion of a dumbass like Dawn, whose criticisms will collapse under scrutiny?

Sigh. Okay, you're right. I feel better. I really do need to keep Elisabeth in mind way more. She's highly respectable, intelligent, empathic... just an all around great person. So if she wanted to keep dating you, then what does that tell you? Forget about Dawn, she's an idiot, good for her, NEXT.

Okay, good. I feel better now.

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