#marble and shade talk in sign language a lot when they don't want people to know what they're saying dkhfdkshfdsbfs

[goose-books]

for the document titles game mrm...

forbidden quark notes

choke

darkling [act two]

forbidden quark notes but of course! quark notes is the general document where i just. throw stuff that i’m thinking about quark that usually makes no sense <3 but i can offer you a conversation between shade and marble! aka heirs to a magical cult who have a tense relationship based around being... foils, among other things. (context here: marble’s been out traveling for eight months.)

Shade looks sideways at him. Marble’s hands flash. In sign language: “Sorry.”

Shade’s sorry, too, for what he didn’t say but thought about saying. But he doesn’t say that; he answers with, “Don’t treat me like a liability.”

“If either of us is a liability…” Marble’s hands go still, the equivalent of an implicatory trailing-off.

His face is blank as ever, but Shade knows him, knows it’s meant to lighten the moment. He allows his mouth to curve up very slightly, a calculated cool movement. And then, before he can think about it, he signs: “If I’d been really low, I would have called you.”

Marble doesn’t hesitate a single beat: “And I would have come home.”

It turns Shade’s stomach. It sets a much less calculated smile to tugging at his lips. “Just like that? Across the country?”

“Right away.”

Shade can’t look at his face anymore, because he doesn’t want to witness Marble’s blinding earnesty; he focuses instead on the broad pale hands. “So much for your grassroots groups.”

“Fuck my grassroots groups.”

“You’re a jackshit politician, Marble.”

“You’re a good one. I don’t hold that against you.”

I missed you, Shade thinks but does not say. I missed you, I missed you, I missed you.

choke is another item on the "things to post once i actually have the brainpower to post a full piece” list; it’s a short story based off of othello (but like. with lesbians) that i wrote, like... the night i finished othello dkfhsdkhfbdsfks. hands you the first line:

You always said I could tell you my secrets, so here’s number one: I didn’t know he was going to kill you when I married him.

and darkling [act two] aka the darkling act i just finished editing yesterday! apparently i’m just throwing excerpts into these asks like darts huh.

“Rory,” Leovald says. Quieter. Breathing hard.

Rory waves.

“You don’t think I’m crazy.”

“Oh, don’t you know, we’re all mad here! I’m mad, you’re mad--” “Rory.”

Much quieter. Near desperate.

Rory clings to the photo in their hands and kicks a leg against the desk hard and says, “No, I don’t think you’re crazy,” and they almost say, “I think you’re an asshole, but I don’t think you’re crazy,” but what they say near-accidentally is, “Do you think you’re crazy?” a lot more aggressively than they mean it.

Leovald doesn’t answer. He just stands there, propping himself up on the desk, panting. And then the tension drains from his shoulders, quite suddenly, like he’s been punctured and deflated. He pulls his swivel chair out, collapses into it like a landslide, puts his face in his hands and breathes.

(ask me about my stupid, stupid document titles)