#mellow ruminations

[secretmellowheart]

there is a cold seeping in my heart gnawing at my bones that I cannot stop by any reasonable means currently available at my disposal and I grow more and more frustrated by my inability to solve this and be better than i am

[farthest-harbor]

Got any human Nick Valentine hcs?

I usually don’t spend too much time thinking about OG human Nick because I find synth Nick to be so much more interesting, especially the way he develops into his own man, so different from his predecessor. That being said, I do have some thoughts about human Nick and what he might have been like.

I think the original human Nick Valentine was tall and broad-shouldered and wore a lot of loose, boxy suits. I think he was probably of Mediterranean descent, maybe Italian or Greek. I imagine him with tanned olive skin and dark brown, almost black hair. I think he had a large and pronounced nose and chin and an angular face. Dark brown eyes, like black coffee, with a sharpness to them as if he was always analyzing you.

Personality: We know that our Nick started with the base personality of the original human Nick at the time of his brain scan (shortly after Jenny’s death), but beyond that the game doesn’t tell us much about the human Nick’s life and personality. Ultimately, I think after the brain scan, each Nick’s life went in entirely different directions, so I think they would have ended up as two very different people. I think synth Nick became much more humble and mellow than his predecessor as he’s lived a long life and experienced so much violence and prejudice. Synth nick also continued detective work, albeit in a very different way, while I think human Nick would have left detective work after losing Jenny. So yeah, I think Nick Valentine is a road that diverged into two.

I think human Nick began very confident, driven, and ambitious, enough that he’d willingly move his whole life from Chicago to Boston to work on a big case that he thought might shape his career. I think he was a workaholic, and maybe drank a bit too much to decompress. I think he spent long hours away from Jenny, caught up in the thrill of the chase, always telling himself that after the wedding he’d stop staying so late and really spend some time at home. I think he always had his mind on his work, even when he was with her, never quite able to just relax and enjoy the moment. Therefore, Jenny’s murder devastated him doubly because of the added guilt of being somewhat absent in the months before they planned to be married. He blamed himself for not being there to protect her, for putting her at risk by taking on the case (even though it wasn’t his fault), and for wasting the precious little time he had with her on a case that went nowhere. I think his drinking became a problem as he ruminated on his whole life crumbling before his very eyes. No more ambitions, no more dreams for a happy future, only bitterness and guilt. I think he spent several years wallowing in grief, until human Nick eventually began to put the pieces back together with the help of some old friends. Left police work for good, disillusioned by the carelessness and corruption. I think he found a quiet job in an office, but always felt restless there, something deep in him never quite able to adjust to a peaceful life. This is when I think the bombs fell and human Nick Valentine’s path ends.

I think oddly enough synth Nick finds more peace in the end than human Nick, but instead has to reckon with his own demons of identity, belonging, and body image.

[lon3rlife]

The difference between Rick Sanchez and Bojack Horseman

On the surface they are both pretty similar characters-miserable nihilistic alcoholic old men in an animated adult cartoon. They both have similar coping mechanisms, deep loneliness and self loathing, and put of emotional barriers behind their emotions because they don’t allow themselves to get attached. At the end of the day the root cause for all that is them.

They both see themselves in a different light, though they both have deep self loathing Rick still sees himself as pretty much a God. I mean he can do anything he wants, he’s a genius, but because of that he sees everyone as intellectually inferior to him, and yes in a way that is true, but with all of that and his own ego and feelings of superiority he still can’t like himself. He does shitty things, he hurts people he cares about; he’s self aware. Bojack and Rick are fully aware that they’re assholes. Bojack on the other hand is consumed by his self loathing. He doesn’t see anything good about himself and ruminates over his past mistakes over and over again. When he does shitty things he feels bad about it, it might not be right away but he eventually feels bad and knows he messed up, but when he realizes he messed up he wallows in self loathing, pity, and shame.

Rick is a self proclaimed nihilist, that’s his whole gimmick. “Pessimistic old man who knows nothing matters and does whatever he wants.” That’s another problem for him, he’s aware that nothing matters, and because of that is free to do whatever, and every shitty thing he does doesn’t really matter in the long run because “nothing matters.” And even though he knows nothing matters, he’s still human and as much as he hates it, he still has feelings. For instance, Morty he views as an “irrational attachment.” Because that’s how he views it; it’s irrational to feel attached to someone if nothing matters, so why does he care so much. He loves his family but can’t comprehend why he can’t just “not care” about them like he does with everything else. Now Bojack searches for meaning. He wants his life to have meaning, and he wants to feel happy, he searches for meaning through relationships, his career, friends, but there’s still a void of emptiness that he wants to fill. Unlike Rick he doesn’t want to settle with knowing that there’s no meaning and just live with that, he knows there has to be something more.

The a similarity between the two though is how they try to change. I feel like Rick’s wake up call was the note Unity left- “I’m attracted to you for the reason I can’t be with you: you can’t change.” That’s what I believe was the main reason for his attempt, not the break up necessarily, I mean they were already apart and I don’t think Rick would’ve of had such a huge reaction to that if it wasn’t for that line. Rick was definitely the most sociopathic and downright insane in season 1, now in the later seasons he’s trying to get better, and that’s something I like about both of the shows is that they show how becoming better isn’t something that will happen overnight, you need to care in order to get better, and other people can’t make you get better, you have to decide for yourself if you want to change. Throughout the seasons of Bojack Horseman he doesn’t really mellow out completely, he does horrible things and keeps doing them until he finally becomes self aware enough to know that something needs to change, and like Rick, once you realize you need to change you need to put in the work. And Bojack did try get better, and he did for a while. When he relapsed he would think that all of his progress is gone, he asked Todd “what if I relapse again?” And Todd replies saying “Then you’ll get sober again.” After the show Bojack wouldn’t have completely became perfect. He’s still going to struggle and face consequences of his actions, and he may have relapses, but as long as he’s truly trying to change and get better he wouldn’t let those things get in the way like how he would have before he got help.

Both Bojack and Rick put up emotional barriers around people if they feel like they’re getting too close, which is the root issue of their loneliness. They both have people that really care about them but they warp their viewpoints to make themselves believe that they are better on their own, and anyone they get close to will end up leaving them in the end.

[lackadaisy-headcanon-supply-unit]

Hello!

I would like to request a Rocky x reader (romantic) oneshot. A fluffy one with a bit of spice would be nice ;) I don't really have a specific plot in mind, but maybe something on the topic of affection? Whatever the story, i'm sure it will be amazing ❤

Thank u, and have a nice day/night!

Hello, Anon!! Thank you for dropping by!! Your request just so happened to align with an idea I've had, and... I got a bit carried away, I suppose. This is well over three thousand words.

Hope you'll find as much entertainment in reading as I did in writing, anyhow!! (I missed crafting dialogue for this silly cat, even if it's equal parts shameless purple prose fun and an absolute pain in the neck.)

“Absolutely not.”

The pose of cheerful enthusiasm he presented the idea with didn’t falter, although his grin seemed to by a sliver.

“Aww, why?”

“It’s not gonna work.”

“We can’t know that until we try!”

You’d come down before opening hour, when many of the lights framing the red-curtained stage and finely carved pillars hadn’t been ignited yet in order to lessen electricity bills, leaving the grandiose speakeasy hall to ruminate in a mellow, warm late afternoon dusk. Leaning against one of the pool tables webbed with gilded patterns on the sides, you glanced him up and down in half-lidded skepticism. It was brief, yet defeating.

“I say this with all the love in my heart,” you prefaced the ruthless confession with a teasing smile, “but you don’t look like you could lift a cornstalk.”

“And you have a point! But consider this,” he countered, gesturing passionately with his hands as if materializing a vision of success before the both of you, and that’s when you recognized this conversation was about to shimmy beyond the bounds of reality. “What wonders can be achieved through the power of love? It can avail you to weather a sea of infernal blazes, crumble ancient mounts to their innermost cores, compel the course of celestial bodies–”

“But it can’t give you muscles.”

The conjurations of poetic fancies promptly shattered, and he gave you a disheartened look.

“Oh, come on, dearest,” he pleaded, all gleaming blue eyes and droopy ears. “Have you no faith in your one and only chevalier?”

“Concerning any other situation… a hard maybe. Depends if anything flammable’s involved.”

You put a finger to your chin in lighthearted contemplation.

“But this… well, I trust you in pulling this off without either of us getting hurt about as far as I could throw you with one hand.”

“I don’t weigh much,” he perked up assuringly. “You could toss me a good few feet, I reckon.”

“So then we should try this the other way around.”

A glint of curiosity hinted he may not have been entirely opposed. Nonetheless, you could tell he wouldn’t let himself be so easily shot down in his steadfast ambitions, about which you happened to be right.

“Your suggestions are appreciated,” he placated upon your prompt sigh of disappointment, “but in the name of chivalry I must persist with my vision. Because I am certain that there is a way, as there is a will, to achieve it.”

He pondered aloud whilst leant against the pool table opposite to yours, tail swishing figure eights in the air as if stirring up the brainworks.

“Just let me think about it…”

A bit to the left, two of the local employment were spectating from their usual spots by the bar. Zib, who had draped himself half-across the counter while Viktor was cleaning it around him, regarded the scene from under his hat with a caustic glance. The smoke simmering from the cigarette he was languidly tasting occasionally wafted your way.

“Looks like chivalry’s not dead yet after all,” he grumbled, the corners of his lips teasing amusement, “but he’s about to be.”

The burly slovak continued with his somewhat menial task in dutiful disinterest, intimidating all unsightly dirt spots off the wooden surface with an effortless glare.

“Idiot vill break own spine vid effort,” he stated matter-of-factly, then after a thoughtful pause, shrugged. “Saves me the trouble.”

“Oh, such searing pessimism!”

Rocky turned to theatrically retort, rejoining your circles from the far reaches of whatever realms his mind had been venturing.

“Well I regret to inform you, gentlemen,” he gave an easygoing little smirk, “that the only sort of spectacle you’ll be getting today is the glorious display of romance’s incandescent triumph.”

“You should heed your sweetheart’s advice, kid,” Zib warned over his glassful of a somewhat suspicious golden beverage. “Artists like you and I just weren’t built for these kinds of strenuous feats. You’ll get a hernia and then the boss lady will be down one questionable bootlegger.”

“Pff… Nonsense talk!”

He waved off the notion as if swatting away a bug, and you pinched your brow in exasperation.

“Waste not such paltry concerns on me, my friend! You see, it might not leave that impression at first glance…” he flexed a bit to show off his bicep then stared at it with a blank expression once it failed to strengthen his argument, “nor perhaps second… but these spindly sinews are rife with untapped potential! Why, you think the Atlas of mythology had trained in advance to support the whole world on his shoulders? And yet, it still goes ‘round smoothly to this day. Which is to say that, hopefully helped by Fortuna’s favor, the release of a comparable innate strength shall aid me in this fated task of carrying mine.”

Despite his conspicuous lack of visible musculature he gave a grin of such radiant certainty it could’ve powered the rest of the lights. Zib blinked slowly, unimpressed in his fermentative, cigarette-stink skepticism. Viktor kept cleaning.

“Albeit I suppose there’s more point in a show rather than tell.”

Rocky stretched his arms in a somewhat comically overstated manner.

“So the old-fashionated way it is!” He then took up a stance and spread them in anticipation. “Come hither, my darling love, let’s prove those naysayers wrong! Leap into the arms of your favorite bard!”

“I still don’t condone this idea.”

You crossed your arms, resolution as hard as the wood digging into your lower back. Unstoppable force smiling baffledly at the inmovable object.

“You don’t?”

“Not really.”

He pouted. Oh, how you couldn’t stand it when those gorgeous sapphires looked at you so coyly despondent. And of course, he was aware.

“You mean you won’t even give it a chance?” he implored, tail gingerly lowering. “Not even if I’ll sooner have my organs be crushed into a fine sludge than let one hair on your head bend the wrong way?”

“Especially not then.”

Patiently, you stood, the twitch of your ears and your own tail’s gentle whipping behind your legs and brushing up to the smooth block of wood being your only movement. You watched him deflate in a slowly progressing manner not unlike that of a balloon animal leaking from a small opening; you could even imagine the characteristic sound to go with.

You tried not to laugh.

“Not even if,” he attempted once more, “it could be a most passionful pageantry of courteousness?”

“More like foolishness.”

Irritated by his snark for a change, you tilted your head in Zib’s direction. When he earned both of your attention by extension the resident nicotine eater, chin resting on the heel of his palm, flicked a huge ear and leisurely presented his back to you as though he’d never cared.

“Just picture it for a second!” Rocky suggested, snapping back to the conversation and taking your hand in his to help transmit the mental imagery through skin-to-skin contact. “A most consummate culmination of chivalrous custom!”

“Certainly,” you rolled your eyes yet didn’t resist when he snuck up close to grab a hold of your waist with an almost imperceptible delicacy.

“I’d gather you in my arms,” he narrated, “a most beauteous royal rose, pooling in your eyes the glimmers of a star-speckled galaxy, a divine black ether brimming with a variegated, dazzling cavalcade of celestial hues… oh, what fair nobility of ephemeral grace, molded in the realms above from the finest marble and ambrosia by lilium-scented, angelic hands…”

His face was close to yours, and your gazes intertwined; you could be quite sure he was just describing what he saw. You averted your eyes, slightly flustered.

“You sure know your words,” you nipped without any real teeth to it.

“I try,” he acknowledged cheerfully, nonetheless keeping proximate. “And me, no more than a humbled troubadour, a mere mortal permitted by Providence to embrace salvation itself,” you made an inarticulate noise of incredulity, “gentle tethering of your mass serving to remind that this resplendent scene is no meager illusion, a cruel trick of the light, but bona fide reality…”

You squirmed half-heartedly away in your chagrin, yet each bit of distance you created between the two of you he kept closing just as effortlessly, drinking in your expressions.

“In rapt entrancement we’d behold each other’s countenance,” you could feel his words on your whiskers, “honey-glaze lusters dancing across our lips in nectareal beckoning, your arms entangling my nape with fervor as you pull me under to merge our souls by way of osculation in the heart of the Earth–”

“Enough rhapsodizing,” you entreated with a wide, mildly embarrassed smile you couldn’t fight, “you poetaster.”

“Now, don’t tell me you wouldn’t enjoy that.”

You exhaled in a burst, gripping the wooden brim you were leant on. Tail curling and uncurling in thought.

“It sounds fine,” you emphatically minced, “but I don’t require it. You know you can just talk sweet to me like that or give me a kiss when I’m still on my feet and you’ll just as easily sweep me off them.”

“But there’s no harm in experimenting, right?”

“That’s… a very dubious statement.”

“Well, if it does work, it shall surely be memorable.”

Across the way, over ornate red carpet and leather seats, Viktor had since taken to polishing glasses while Zib ever-industriously continued to metabolize the establishment’s embalming fluid reserves in spite of the hour.

“…And if it doesn’t,” Rocky proposed the possibility with great hesitation, “as far as I can recall, bone fractures actually heal a lot quicker than you’d expect.”

With the band backstage, that’d be only two direct witnesses to your loss of dignity.

“You’re not about to let this go until I oblige,” you observed with a heavy heart and patted his arm, “so go ahead. I’ll give you a chance to enter history records as the world’s first cooked pasta-based organism to princess carry a whole person.”

You adjusted yourself in front of him at a roughly ninety-degree angle and put your arm around his shoulders. Enthusiasm flawlessly rekindled he took swift hold of your back in return, biting his lip in anticipation like a giddy kid.

“But if you sprain a muscle, I’m not bringing you the ice,” you stated firmly to his face.

“You can’t sprain what’s scarcely there,” he beamed back like it was of any reassurance.

“Well, alright.”

That obnoxious smoke hit your nose again. Beneath the golden glow of red lampshades, Zib had unexpectedly honored your ambitions by sitting marginally more erect, pushing up the brim of his hat to ensure his sight wasn’t failing him.

“Wouldn’t you look at that,” he grunted, pointy eyebrows raised. “They’re doing it for real.”

Viktor stopped in his surprisingly gentle handiwork and fixed a sharp, singular eye on the pair of you. When your clumsy preparations and nervous fidgeting painted a confirmatory enough picture, he set the glass and rag down with a thud, leisurely slapping two huge paws on the clean oak counter to lean on it.

“Dis vill be amusing.”

You gulped at the audience, blooming in your chest a severe doubt. You squeezed Rocky’s shoulder and felt the pointed conjunction of bones digging into your palm without any real effort.

“Whenever you’re ready…”

He smiled at you with those sweet blue eyes that drew your attention like a magnet, adamant on dissolving your worries within themselves. It almost convinced you that what you were about to do wasn’t both ridiculously asinine and physically unsafe… albeit still rather mild by the standards of dating Rocky Rickaby.

You looked at one of the curling, wrought iron chandeliers and sucked in a resolute breath.

“…Here goes nothing.”

In clenched-fist concentration, you jumped and threw your legs in the air for him to catch. He grabbed after them in wide-eyed startlement and as the momentum flung you at him, you prayed.

There was a grunting noise. Something in-between the squeak of a strangled rubber chicken and the aghast chuff of a scuffed, abused bagpipe as every last square inch of air is violently crushed out of it; you’d heard naught of such a combination before yet were instantly able to identify it. Arms clasped tight around his neck you hung on for dear life whilst he gripped your side and thighs in a no less firm desperation, fingers unintendedly clawing into tense flesh. He stood taut as a bowstring, you could feel as much beneath the clothes, though unfortunately nowhere near as straight and with every slight tremble and corrective squirm you feared yourselves tipping over in his direction and giving the carpeted limestone a sore greeting.

Time collapsed to a halt under the weight of anticipation. Cautious in your breaths, wide-eyed and blatantly uncomforted by his palpable quaking, you watched as his rigid expression of concentration strained on a half-hearted grin for your sake to mask what very much still was mortal terror hatching from amongst the shards of hubris.

And then… nothing.

You blinked a few times. Other than your own heartbeat, and what amounted to the whimpers of a heavy wooden chair being dragged across the floor that you soon confirmed to be coming from him instead, all sounds of impending doom receded. You took a deep inhale of the stagnant cave air and held it in bewilderment, knees squished close to one another.

Well, you’d be damned.

Flush to his torso and clutching the cheap fabric of his shirt, you stared on, trying to comprehend the situation. As was he, evidently, with how amidst his tight-lipped yet valiant bearing of the ramifications his eyes darted around the room as if disaster was running unusually late. No gears turn at such a pace however, for when at last the ice in your tendons began to melt in contemplation of asking whether he could move enough to put you down safely or if you should just jump for it, he exerted a small huff of accomplishment and it changed something, because you began to dip rapidly forward. Some indiscernible profanity escaped your mouth.

At least he gallantly broke your fall… and a rib as well, by the sound of it.

The ground was about as soft as you’d imagined when it kissed your limbs and left you with your hands splayed on velvety carpet. You caught glimpse of your audience and, lo and behold, Viktor for a brief second appeared to possess something of a smile behind the bar. Of schadenfreude, naturally. Nonetheless the witnessing of such an evanescent miracle left you nothing short of humbled.

“Well, that surprised nobody,” Zib sneered, a whiff of smoke leaving his nostrils. “We’ll hold him a tasteful funeral.”

“He’s not dead,” you indignantly countered, blowing tousled locks of hair out of your face, then turned to your knight in shoddy armor just to be sure. “You’re not dead, right?”

With that, you recognized that the reason your posterior ached less than the rest of you was his organs still being smushed under it, so you hastily clambered off. Sweetly enough, he hadn’t mentioned, though it may have just been that he’d yet to recover from getting the wind knocked out of him enough to form a sentence.

“Never felt more alive,” he wheezed in affirmation, clutching his torso. “I’ve come to sense fibers of my physique I didn’t know existed.”

“No wonder. Did you dislocate something?”

Crouched over your boyfriend on all fours, you scrutinized him whilst your tail lashed back and forth in acute concern regarding his lack of attempts to get up despite having him practically caged under you. Considering his talent for looking pathetic while curled up on the floor, you couldn’t be blamed.

“Well, all of my bones are still inside,” he tilted his head without raising it to look over himself. “That’s their designated place, I believe.”

“You’re such a twit.”

Bright blue eyes flicked up at you innocently, arms clasped together in a protective self-embrace. Your features softened with a sigh.

“I heard a crack,” you explained, gaze lingering over his ribcage. “I thought I’d hurt you.”

“Oh, that was just my pride,” he dismissed jovially. “Nothing worth the bewailment. Poor thing wasn’t about to survive the winter anyhow.”

That restless, puffy tail of yours came to a tentative pause upon his knees, drawn only halfway up to accomodate your presence as he squirmed lightly in his restricted position. Though the barely lit murk of underground, his grin still shined as disarming as any other.

“You couldn’t hurt me if you tried.”

Whether he meant that remark as a pacification or a challenge, you preferred not to dispute. You let go of the tension in your shoulders however, easing off to settle down next to him and allow him some space to do the same.

“Well, this was just stupid,” you concluded, listlessly examining your bruised appendages. “I have no idea what drove you to something so pointless.”

He carefully rolled up off the ground then simply sat there, blinking at you in a way that betrayed neither any particular discomfort nor the absence of it. You observed him in ponderance. Due to the lack of any concrete signals from upstairs you decided you’d just have to assume the best.

“Unless,” you teased with a squint of suspicion, minding your volume, “you just wanted me on top of you that bad.”

Now that definitely reached the headquarters. When it did, he responded with one of those downright sinful grins that made the notion of punching him in the face sound vastly appealing.

“It wasn’t according to my plan, per se,” he gestured in a sly manner, “but it’s certainly not a development you’ll catch me complaining about.”

“You cad.”

You regarded him with a scolding glare you didn’t really mean but perhaps should’ve. He stood or, well, sat his ground, and it didn’t take a medium to guess anymore what newfound visions might’ve been stirring on behind that striped forehead of his; you only hoped he wouldn’t start waxing poetics about it.

“Could’ve just asked me nicely,” you murmured with a smirk.

You noted the proximity all of a sudden; his nose couldn’t have been two inches away from touching yours. He peered down at you in awareness, chuckling.

“Ah, but the overture's half the merriment.”

“This place has marvelous acoustics, by the way,” Zib spoke out of nowhere and made every bone in your body flinch, “so you might wanna consider taking this somewhere else before our sparse patronage arrives–”

“Oh, shut it, Zibowsky.”

You snapped at him, ears pinned, feeling rather deserving of some soap in your mouth. Rocky got over the interruption with a more careless ease and disregarded the air of awkwardness he helped create in favor of lighting up in triumph.

“But our labour for love wasn’t in vain, after all!” he exclaimed over your shoulder. “We all saw it, right? My romantically inspired exhibition of unprecedented prowress? I must’ve held on for a good minute there!”

“How long did it last, by the way?” you inquired, watching as Viktor continued cleaning glasses. “I was too busy panicking to count.”

“Two seconds.”

Your face stretched in astonishment. Zib took out a lighter.

“You’re pulling my leg.”

“No, really,” he reiterated, igniting another cigarette with a series of clicks while the previous butt laid crumpled beside him on the counter, “two seconds. I was just about to congratulate you.”

You stared on at the sprawling carpet, befuddled, yet the intricate patterns held no explanation for this anomaly. Time does simply happen to slow to a crawl when you’re fearing for your life, as it turned out. Rocky slumped in dejection.

“Ah well,” he lamented, bushy brows descending. “It would appear that my hopes to beguile you with a debonair display could not come true after all.”

His tail gingerly curled around him, saddened to an equal degree. You pouted along in playful endearment.

“You’re so silly,” you ascertained. “I don’t mind that you’re a weakling.”

You took his hand balled up on the ground, enveloping it with your own. He watched in slight trepidation.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

The two of you locked eyes amidst the magnificent cavern of bygone extravagance; the ‘heart of the Earth’, as he’d put it. Decked in hues of crimson and gold and marinating in a mystiqueful twilight, a regrettably vacant wonder of architectural design honoring the arts décoratifs, all the dazzling sights of the establishment couldn't have hoped to draw you away from the one instrictic extension of it you delighted in looking at the most.

“And I wouldn’t trade you in for the brawniest of gallants,” you pressed a tingling kiss on his cheek, “my noodle-limbed prince.”

[selarina]

Ghosts in Love

-> Suna Rintaro x Reader

Chapter 1: In the Meat and Dairy Isle

Summary: Amidst shared streets and familiar alleys, chance encounters with your ex at grocery stores or parks evolve into shopping together and sharing park benches.

Loosely inspired by the poem "Ghosts in Love" by Carl Sandburg

Chapter Warning: exes, domestic angst lmao

Words: 1k words

Taglist: Open

Read on AO3 | Series Masterlist

You and Suna Rintaro have purchased tickets for a concert that is almost a year away.

Neither of you have canceled the booking for those tickets. Neither of you have tried to sell it off. It just lies there in the pile of your dusty emails. No attempt is made to delete it. You just let it make a home there, catching dust until you decide to reopen and read it again. And again.

It’s been 7 months since the two of you have broken up and you're wondering if you really need to get rid of them. You only mean, things have significantly mellowed down to a point where you go grocery shopping together, in a manner of speaking.

You still live in the same neighbourhood as him, so days of running into him at the grocery store, the park, or the laundromat have turned into days of shopping together, sharing a park bench, or using the same washing machine if there’s room. Cheaper that way, the two of you reason out.

So you've decided to bring it up at your next weekly run-in.

Except, you don’t see him all week. Or the week after that.

It’s odd but you don’t ruminate, you don’t have the time to. It’s the end of the month and you have deadlines that keep swamping up all over your calendar. And you also have a company ball to prepare for.

"Hey," he says, bopping your cold nose. You think that must have been instinct, because he brings his hand back down almost immediately at the touch. Like it stung to you, or that he's simply repulsed.

But you see him again, on a gloomy day. It’s raining on and off and everything is sticky. You’re sweating but you’re also cold as you stand opposite him in the meat and dairy aisle of the grocery store. His hair has grown a little, and it cascades across his face like a flood of dark water.

Your gaze is now drawn to the yogurt section as you look for the brand you usually use. A soft pink package. He lingers behind you through this, and you’re conscious of his movements. You wonder if he can see right through you, but it's a thought that only lasts for a split moment. He never really did understand you that well, you think.

"Haven't seen you in a while," you remark glibly as you toss a can of milk into your basket.

But it's a lot more intense in your head, and you find that your defences are back up. Why? You aren't sure, but you strongly believe that you will find out today.

“Yeah,” he says. You wait for a moment until you realize he isn’t going to explain himself. He doesn't have to after all.

“How have you been?” you try to change the topic.

“Fine, a bit restless. We haven’t had practices for a while,” he says. You proceed to basket the yogurt, along with some cheese.

You’re both sitting in a park now, just about to part ways before he says, “I went on a date.”

You hum in response.

—

The evening passes by as the two of you slip into the inevitable flow of a conversation.

You’re finally grateful you braced yourself for the inevitable.

You can’t say it doesn’t hurt, but it only hurts like a sting, rather than a typhoon. Right now, you’re too muddled with questions. Questions you don’t have the right to ask.

You don’t say anything.

A beat later, you ask, “Why are you telling me this?”

“I–I really don’t know actually,” he chuckles, and for the very first time, you hate it.

You hate the way his cheeks hollow into soft undefined dimples, you hate the crinkle at the edge of his eyes, and most of all you think you hate him in this moment.

“What?” It comes out before you can stop it, and nurture it into something more mellow — but right now, your anger seeps through your mouth and spits onto his face.

“Okay. Um, I really did need to leave so,” you say, and with a swoop you push yourself up.

This time you move quicker, walking away to leave but he stops you. His hand comes up to clutch your wrist. It's not tight enough for you to not walk away but you stop.

“I’m sorry,” he says and he seems genuine, which makes you hate him even more.

“It’s okay, Rin.” You say, because you could nurture your anger into something different. You’re definitely not okay, but you can pretend you think. For a bit, until you no longer have to pretend.

“Please, ca—just sit with me.” He says, and the wind blows, sending a chill down your back but you sit down anyway because you’ve never truly been good at telling him no. Not when it mattered, at least.

“Thank you,” he mutters.

You don’t speak for the rest of the time. The two of you just sit there, and your anger dies and it dies, and you almost forget about all of it, because this is nice right?

This is comfortable and familiar, and it makes you wish you could turn time back, at least in your head. But it’s abruptly met with a stop, when he speaks again, “It was bad.”

“I figured,” you say.

You hum, urging him to continue. Reluctant but ready.

“The date, I mean," he elaborates.

“I don’t think I’m over you yet,” he says. “It’s killing me just a bit, I think.” He tries to soften the sentence with a chuckle.

“I think that would kill me more,” he says soft as a whisper, you could barely hear it. It almost made you assume it was just the wind playing tricks on you.

“Want me to change neighbourhoods so you can move on then?”

Your words come out sounding a bit condescending but you have a soft edge to your voice, a lilt of humour if you will, like it’s amusing that you would ever do something like this for him. Would you?

“Anyway, it should be you if one of us is moving,” you say.

“Well, I was here first. It’s only fair,” you say, firmly.

“Me? No way,” he says, his pitch rising. “It’s closer to practice, and the home office."

He doesn’t say anything for a bit. You were here first, you were more in tune with this area than he was. Most of his favourite things about this neighbourhood are borrowed, he realizes. They're all yours.

At that, he feels a bit empty, “That’s actually fair.” He adds, “I’d rather neither of us have to move. I’d rather us be friends.”

“Me too, Rin.” You smile at him.

Only you can’t help but think about how it sounds like a distant fantasy, reminiscent of dream-addled childhood dreams where you thought of driving yourself across the country. You reassure yourself because you can drive now at least.

[miss-tc-nova]

And You'll Miss It - Leona Kingscholar x Reader

Hey! Remember this? Have some pain to go with that fluff! Because I can't help myself.

Premise: It's time for you/Yuu to go, but Leona's been missing all day

Words: 602

Warning: Kinda sad

~~~~~

               Jack’s arms are crushing as he holds me tight. I can feel my ribs bending.

               “Jack!” I pat uselessly at his back. “Too tight, buddy!”

               Instantly, he lets me fall back to the floor. Ears pulled back, he holds me steady. “Sorry!”

               I laugh. “It’s okay.”

               Looking at his face, I can see him fighting his sad-puppy expression. Reaching out, I wrap my arms around his neck and, this time, he holds softer.

               “I’m gonna miss you too,” I murmur into his shoulder.

               Stepping back, I turn to the hyena. As always, he’s much more mellow though there’s still traces of sadness there. There’s no hesitation though when I open my arms to him.

               “You keep yourself out of trouble, okay?”

               “Sheheh, I should be sayin’ that to you.”

               Our heads bonk together playfully as we part. Once again, my eyes scan the room and my heart sinks. “No sign of him?”

               Ruggie’s head shakes. “I haven’t heard anythin’ from him all day.”

               “I see…”

               Though my heart aches, there’s not much time to ruminate on the man that stood me up. Heartslabyul flat out tackles me to the ground in a mass of sobbing embraces.

               Today is the day I leave Twisted Wonderland. Honestly, I never thought this day would come. I’d become so accustomed to living among the students of Night Raven College that I kind of forgot that I had a life elsewhere. But Crowley finally kept his word and I was heading home.

               But there’s one person I haven’t gotten to see one last time.

               Grim’s forehead rubs against mine. I can see the tears in his eyes though he tries his best to put on a brave face. When he leans back to look at me, I can’t help the blink I give him. In return, his eyes close and he gives me another enthusiastic nuzzle.

               It breaks my heart to let Deuce take him from me. “Take care of him for me, okay?”

               “Of course.”

               Ace, eyes somewhat teary, places a hand on the cat’s head. “We can’t just let him run amok on his own, right?” His attempt at laughter his shaken by a sniffle.

               Reaching forward, I bring them all into a hug. “I love you guys.”

               I almost don’t want to let go, but Crowley gives me one last warning, so I step away from the mass of student. Climbing the few steps before the Dark Mirror, I pause and look back. These are the faces I will cherish forever—we endured hardship, had adventures, and grew together. I will never forget them.

               I just wish I could’ve seen…

               At the far end of the hall, there’s one last person, leaning against the door. I’d been searching for him all day and dreaded to think I’d leave without saying goodbye. He was the biggest reason I was reluctant to leave. I spent so many hours with him beneath the greenhouse trees and cheering through Spelldrive games. At first I thought we could never be more than strangers, but he proved me wrong a thousand times over. If he just asked, I would probably agree to stay in a heartbeat.

               He probably knows that.

               That damn cat is always a step ahead of me.

               A weary smile pulls at my lips as I meet his chartreuse eyes. There’s a soft one in return.

               And then slowly, he blinks.

               A sleeve drags across my watering eyes. Still, a breath of a laugh escapes me, glad that we could have this one last exchange.

               I blink back.

               I love you too.

~~~~~

Nova’s Twisted Wonderland Masterlist

[deadboyfriendd]

Sovereign Creatures: The Triumph Of Death

Summary: You plan on reanimating your lover piece by piece, today, you are in search of his eyes.

Warnings: Fem!Reader, Mermaid reader, Plague Doctor!Steve Harrington, based off of The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw, period appropriate violence, gore, blood, self mutilation, surgical instruments

My content is 18+ Minors DNI

The bezoar sits encased in a glass cloche, its ruminating pulse the only thing to remind you that he was once alive, too– and that he may be alive again one day. 

The bezoar of your dead lover– a bolus of broken-off teeth and snarled hairs, fingernails, caked dirt, curds of mummified gray, colored glass. Over it all, a lettering of fine blue veins, like an alphabet that only muscle can decode – incubated his dwindling consciousness. You dreamed of the day this organ would pulsate behind flesh once more. 

You knew nothing of his pilot existence, where he learned his kindness. You did not know of the life he lived with a mother and father, where he learned to speak and run, where he felt the weight of the earth in all of its glory. Where the warmth of the sunburn overcomes the sting and the weight of existence is a beautiful one to bear. 

Instead you knew of his last existence. This one stunk with the morosity of being reanimated but never fully alive again. You’d wondered if his first death had been as painful as his last, even though you knew it would be foolish to assume that it hadn’t. Creatures of his nature rarely harbored peace in death. The weight of this existence was bruising– crushing, even. 

You knew this existence would be beautiful– almost as beautiful as he had been.

Your boy would be beautiful again, made in the image of your own ideal of it. 

Your finger traced over his notes, scared to smudge to ink despite its age. You felt the embossing against the parchment and tried to feel his hands against your fingers like reeds, blood flowing under his skin in its inky black beauty and pulsating through the ruminants of his inkwell heart. 

The study felt more like yours than his own now, though he had inhabited it for years before your existence. You were merely a vessel for his findings. A piece plucked and carved from this rib of his essence. A slave to the bezoar behind a glass cloche. 

It still pulsated its erratic song in a fleshy waltz. You looked for the hum of his voice beneath it, not quite able to remember its exact pitch. You listen to it again and again, the mellow drone of it a backing that fills your studies. Sometimes you listened for a whisper, sometimes you listened for permission to continue. 

There were more pieces of you covering this place than there were pieces of him, it felt like. You could no longer differentiate your books interwoven with his on the shelves– the lines between your handwriting and his becoming one blurred entity, the line where your being ended and the pieced-together formations of where his new being began intertwined as one desolate, threadbare creature. 

The human hands can be differentiated by the presence of an opposable thumb, made different from the other phalanges marked by the absence of the middle phalanx… the metacarpal is the connecting factor to the smaller subset of carpals within the wrist. 

This you knew was his writing, and you were thankful in the beginning for how thorough he had been in his studies. You allowed yourself the pleasure of feeling the ridges of his writing:

Trapezoid, trapezium, capitate, hamate, scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, pisiform. 

You try to feel them in your own wrists, try to feel the sutures in bone and the roll of ligament over them. You tried to feel the feeling of being alive once more, differentiating it from what– you weren’t quite certain. You tried to remember a time in which he had been alive. 

“That’s it.” He would have whispered to you, through a velveteen smile, his own gentle fingers wrapped delicately around your wrists– feeling the roll of ligament over bone the way you tried to feel now, “So Long To Pinkie, Here Comes The Thumb.” 

Scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, pisiform, hamate, capitate, trapezoid, trapezium.  You jotted down alongside his writing. 

His hands were one of the few things remaining after the day of the saints– your body seethed like the embers that remained of him. You watched them settle low against the glass in their formaldehyde home and wished desperately that you could pull one out to cradle your face just once– the way he had. 

You wished that you could trail your fingers over the hills and valleys of the soft plush of his hands in search of the canyons between his fingers in which yours would seek solace just once more. You wished to feel his thumb run rivers across the crest of your lip, pilling downward over the plush and settle in the crevice between there and your chin. Just once do you wish to  feel warmth behind flesh. 

It had been years, now. More than you could remember. 

His existence, the way he was before the only remnants of him you had were his studies, seemed blurry now– a far off memory in which you could not quite soft through. But you remembered the warmth that radiated from him like the sun. You do not remember who he was, yet the remnants of his previous existence consumed your entirety. 

The violence in which he gave his life for you no longer stings, but fills you with a hot, blinding anger.

His existence was violent and painful, manufactured to be that way, yet nonetheless beautiful. Sometimes you believe he does not want to live again, but you are selfish. You will show him that there is existence without pain. 

You press tender fingers, cold and aching against the glass cloche. A promise to him that you will return in due time. That you will come bearing gifts. That you will hold each other once more. 

The air is clammy this time of year, salty on your tongue when you inhale and chilled from the sea air. The cobblestone is right beneath your feet, and you walk with more caution than you typically would during the day. A fire burns in the distance, woolen-cloaked bodies stand around it in a horde in silence, staring into its molten nucleus. Humans were like that, you found, drawn to warmth. Maybe you had lost your edge. Maybe the frailty of humanity was contagious. 

Maybe a part of him had stayed human. 

He had been drawn to it as a moth to a gas lamp, quick to release his body to her thrashing, ravenous hands. Had the fire been the cause? Or, perhaps, the warmth in which death held him delicately between her fingers. He had held you the same way. You would hold him that way again. 

The first doctor was one that he was close to in his reanimated life; they had been brothers in death, harvested and reanimated at the hands of The Saints. They had passed years of orphaned childhood by playing kill the pig– a sickening game it was, even to you. Swine to slaughter, children for sacrificial youth. The saints plucked pieces from their bodies like ripened fruit, replaced them with other displaced pieces, ugly shows in sick theaters under the guise of ritualism for the other children to watch– until there were no remnants of them to be left. A quilt of leftover parts and shells of children that once were and would never be again. 

The woods that congregate like hooded men at the mouth of where river meets ocean are deep. His house is hidden deeper within them, not unlike your own, a dry thatched roof and stone walls. Solitary, with sea salt tears brimming cobblestone eyes. Yet, somehow warmer than yours. It felt like the depths of the ocean in which you resided. The part of you that human-adjacent held it close to you. 

His name is Edward. It was one of the few things he kept for himself in his old life, along with his eyes. When you would ask why, he would say:

“The Saints preferred colored eyes, my dear.” 

You’d figured that was why you were searching for your own pair now. Green, like the moss that covers the dirt in a spongy expanse in the spring.

You knock on the door and he is warm in greeting– almost as warm as it is within his house. 

“Ah, you’re here for them.”

There is a code in the way the plague doctors speak, they are warm to each other, but speak around the visceral topics of what they are actually doing. The world still feared them. In your bluntness, you had still not mastered the art. 

“The eyes, yes.” 

His back is to you. Even with his figure cloaked, you can see the misshapenness flex and roll beneath a linen sea. There is a tincture clinking as the jars bounce off of another in a song as he picks each one up and examines it– contents dancing formaldehyde dances. He is a creature in his own respect. You feel a solidarity to him despite the sovereigness to your creation. 

Your hands were not warm, not like his were. Skin rubbery and catching along itself in a tacky half-dryness as you reach to your back. Scales lay there, green and blue like the refraction of abalone. Sharp against any flesh that dare come close. The skin there is raised where you had done this before. 

It stings less for this time, but the dull ache pulsates beneath the skin where the pockets still remain. Your fingers bleed from the grip, and a deep blood seeps from the wounds like outstretched arms that reach for the scale. 

There is an infatuation that resides within the plague doctors with your existence. These pieces of you had proven incredibly valuable to them in the past. 

A book on the shelf calls to you– bound in leather and charred to an inky blackness around the edges. Necromantia. 

An old magic. Older than your lifetime. 

“What will that cost me?” You asked, Edward, who, in turn, pulls the book from the shelf. 

“We will settle that in time.”

You aren’t quite sure what it means, regardless, you tuck the book into your cloak– near your chest. It ruminates its own pulse, respires its own breaths– much like the bezoar. 

“You know,” he begins, eyes somber and black against the golden glow of the fire light, “the saints had a way of resurrecting us, of sorts… bringing us to life without actually killing us–”

“Rebirth without death.”

“Yes, so it was.” His eyes have become pits, swirling blackness of eternal oblivion. A rift in the seams of this world that points you toward his damnation. 

They had only been children. 

“I know this may be difficult to hear,” He says, voice low– you cannot tell if it for preservation of your emotions or for caution of violence, “but it may be best to let the dead be dead.” 

You assumed his resentment towards the saints was a mirror reflection of Steven’s. A fiery hatred that burned like embers deep within his chest– the lifeblood in which kept him alive for so long. He fed off of this hatred, he burned his own body to ash in search of it. He wanted The Saints dead– so much that he would offer himself to this hatred, too. 

This resentment burned in your throat tonight. It burned in choking sobs and hot tears that rolled down your rubbery flesh. It clouded your vision as you splayed ocular nerves. It burned your nose in tandem with preserving fluids. It burned in your chest as you took a step back, admiring his beauty in anatomical pieces. 

He isn’t dead. Just incomplete.

You should let him be dead, but the pulsating of the bezoar pleads to stay alive. 

When he opens borrowed eyes again, would he resent you too?

[sednonamoris]

arsonist’s lullaby

Pairing: John Marston x gn!reader

Summary: With Sean dead and the Confederate gold nowhere to be found, the Braithwaites learn exactly why boys are off-limits.

Warnings: Canon-typical violence/gore, canonical character death, arson/fiery deaths, angst, kidnapping, toxic loyaltyyyyy

Word count: 2,777

A/N: Emerging from my absence to post this chapter and fade back into the ether ✌️

Series masterlist • AO3

—

In the end, it’s a perfectly ordinary day when things come to a head.

Midsummer sun has beat down all day, only just now mellowing to a deep orange, early evening glow. Standing halfway up the path to camp on guard duty, nothing remarkable has happened at all, except maybe the number of deerflies you’ve had to fend off. Like the heat alone isn’t enough.

Micah and Sean and Bill rode into town on business earlier. Sean jabbered something about meeting up with Arthur and that Gray sheriff, but he was insistent on keeping the rest a mystery. High profile stuff, you know. Not for old-timers like you to worry about. You just rolled your eyes and sent him on his way.

Other than that, it’s been awfully quiet— Even after Karen and Bill and Lenny and Arthur hit Valentine’s bank the other week. If you were a more suspicious person you might call it too quiet, but it’s been nice to have a bit of a break. You and John have hardly spent a moment apart. Camp chores go quicker together, you tell everyone, but it hardly takes a genius to see you’re more attached at the hip than ever. Moving sacks of cornmeal and haying horses and chopping wood doesn’t usually result in the lovestruck looks stuck on your faces, after all.

Arthur, too, has enjoyed the down time. If he isn’t sharing a cup of morning coffee with his wife then he’s reading storybooks to his surrogate son, complete with ridiculous voices. He puts on a deep, gruff baritone for the bad guys, then pitches higher for a hero that sounds suspiciously like Jack. It’s sweet. The mantle of secondhand fatherhood fits snugly across his broad shoulders, and you can’t help but feel that if anyone ever deserved a second chance at all this, it’s him.

John’s been watching them with the strangest mix of joy and wistfulness and regret and shame. It’s always gone in a blink. You never quite know what to say.

But there’s no time to ruminate further when a slow, steady, thumping lope comes within earshot. You almost miss it, lost in thought.

“Who goes there?”

You’re not sure why you bother asking; the footfalls are too heavy to be anyone but Bill on Brown Jack. When they come into view there’s a tense set to Bill’s shoulders and unease in the whites of Brown Jack’s eyes. You see something slung behind the saddle, unmoving.

A body.

You only register it as Sean when he slows to a stop beside you.

It’s jarring to see the lively young Irishman so horribly, deathly still. His clothes are stained with blood and singed from bullets, but the gaping hole in his head is what turns your stomach and raises your hackles as well as the hairs on the back of your neck. Pulpy brains. Shards of skull. A once-bright eye bulged, crooked and unseeing. A damn good headshot.

Who would be gunning for him? you think. But really, after all the trouble you’ve been stirring down here, who wouldn’t? It’s only been a matter of weeks since you and the boys stole those horses. Less since he and Arthur burned the tobacco fields.

You look up at Bill after a long moment.

“Wanna tell me how the fuck you got the kid killed?” you say, voice low. Simmering. Seething in the summer heat.

Bill’s expression is caught between guilt and resentment. “It was them Gray boys.”

“Them Gray boys?”

“They were waitin’ for us! Arthur… well, he reckons they figured us out. Talked to that Braithwaite woman, I mean.”

“Where is he? Alive?”

“He and Micah ain’t far behind. Don’t expect they’ll be comin’ together.”

You don’t know what to say to that, so you just shake your head and try to think past the blood pounding through your eardrums. Ringing in your skull. “We gotta bury him.”

“I know,” he snaps.

Where would Sean want to be buried? With a view of the water? In the shade of the trees? Certainly not alone, but there’s little choice there. “We gotta— He deserves someplace decent.”

“I know.” Softer, this time. “...There’s a quiet spot up the other side of the path.”

You nod. “Don’t let the girls see.”

—

The air is thick and stagnant even as the afternoon fades into evening. You’ve always hated digging graves, and this heat only makes it worse. Cicadas hum. Flies buzz. Bill picked a good spot out of the dying sun, but sweat still pours down both of your faces and necks, soaking through your shirts. Salt stings your eyes and the tip of your tongue.

Once the hole is deep enough, Bill does his best to arrange whatever’s left of Sean with some dignity; arms crossed, a coin over his intact eye. It’s still a sorry sight. You take the pistol from his holster to give to Karen and let its dead weight rest in your belt while you and Bill get to burying. When the work is done, he stutters a few insufficient words over a yet-unmarked grave. He looks to you, then, and you fish your flask off your belt and take a strong swig before pouring a generous amount over the freshly turned earth.

“Cheers, brother,” says a hollow voice that sounds like yours. “Save us a seat.”

You don’t bother saying where.

—

Karen hits you when you tell her. A full arm swing. Open-palmed. Then again when you hand her the pistol.

You let her.

Feels like the least you can do.

—

The evening passes in a haze of numb grief. You don’t know what to do with yourself, so you hide, only emerging from your tent when you hear raised voices outside Dutch’s.

“Where’s my goddamn son?” Abigail demands. “They took him, didn’t they? They took my son!”

And Jesus if this day couldn’t get worse. Your eyes scan the camp, like you’d be able to spot little Jack where his mother couldn’t. The sick feeling that’s been festering in your stomach since Sean’s burial twists and writhes and weighs you down like lead. Everyone knows missing is about as good as dead these days, but you don’t dare say that to Abigail.

“Where is my son, Dutch Van der Linde?!”

More and more begin to crowd around the commotion. The girls lay consoling hands on Abigail’s shoulders that quake with anger and fear. Arthur’s face is grim and drawn beside her. John’s is shadowed behind them, torn between guilt and anger. Hosea pushes past the throng to lay blame on the Braithwaites— at least, he says Kieran saw some boys what looked like Braithwaites not far from camp earlier. After what happened in town today, you have to admit it makes sense. Both families have you figured out, and they’re out for their pound of flesh.

As if Sean wasn’t enough already.

“We will find Jack, we will bring him back to you, and we will kill any fool that had the temerity to touch one hair on that boy’s head,” Dutch vows in answer to Abigail’s frantic questioning. “Right now.”

And he turns on his heel and makes toward The Count to do just that. Everyone follows. Bill calls out asking about extra guns that are accepted readily. Micah and Kieran are ordered to protect the camp while you’re all away. Weapons drawn, eyes blazing, you mount your horses and make off into the night.

This is the warpath. The beating hooves and rushing blood. Moonshine canters steadily beneath you, keeping stride with Old Boy and Arthur’s mount on either side. It’s been a long time since the whole gang has ridden out like this, chomping at the bit for a bloodletting.

“I swear, I’ll kill everyone there!” John snarls. He’s settled into his anger now, quicker on its draw than his pistol.

“Easy, Marston,” Arthur says. His voice is low and dangerous like how he warns off strangers. Not family. Not John. “You don’t check your shots, Jack’ll end up dead too.”

“Don’t tell me to take it easy! That’s my—” but John chokes on the word before he can get it out.

Son, he was going to say. That’s his son.

But Jack is as much Arthur’s as he is John’s anymore, and right now neither one can stand it. You can’t bear to look at the fear nor the anger nor the burning blame in either of their eyes.

—

The oaks that line the path to Braithwaite Manor are always imposing, but here in the dusky nighttime you swear you can feel their ancient eyes watching. Bloody roots gorged on bloodstained grounds; twisted, gnarled branches grasping for a Heaven they’ll never reach. There are few stars that shine through the scattered clouds in the early night sky, but you wish upon every one that Jack is safe, and you vow that no one will make it out of here alive if he isn’t.

Everyone dismounts at the gate. Beside you John and Arthur are tense. Mouths set, trigger fingers twitching, eyes aflame with a primal sort of anger and fear that can only come from losing a child. Dutch, too, is furious. The fact that anyone would touch one of his own is normally enough to have him ranting, almost frothing at the mouth, but he must sense that Arthur and John need him calm.

Calmer than them, anyhow.

Ahead, the manor house is lit with a warm orange glow from its pillared porch. The moon casts strange light across the shadowy night, flickering in and out of cloud cover. There is only the sound of gravel beneath your boots and anticipation.

“Get down here now, you inbred trash!” Dutch bellows at the first sight of the Braithwaite boys.

“What the hell do you want?” they call back, like they don’t know.

John makes to aim his gun and you brush against his shoulder as a comfort and a warning. He snarls but doesn’t shoot. Not yet.

Dutch continues, “We’ve come for the boy. You must’ve known we would.”

Arthur is little better off, glaring holes in the heads of every Braithwaite son and cousin and uncle and friend that emerges from the looming house. There’s more of them by the minute. You feel everyone tense around you. Their guns aren’t lifted - not yet - but all it will take is a sign from Dutch.

Not yet.

“That is a young boy. That is not the way you do things. Hand him over.”

“Get the hell off our land!”

Not yet.

Dutch’s eyes darken in challenge. He doesn’t so much as turn his head toward any of you, but the shift in energy is electric. The whole world holds its breath.

“If you ain’t gonna be civilized about this…”

Now.

All at once everyone opens fire. It’s a symphony of gunfire, bullets screaming by from every direction. You pull John behind a crate just as one grazes his ear. He snarls out a curse while you kill the man on the balcony who shot at him. The body tumbles over the railing and stains the steps red with blood and brains.

Dutch calls out marching orders, but through the din he’s nearly impossible to hear. John heads inside. You follow suit. The manor doors swing wide open like the unhinged jaw of a snake, welcoming you into the belly of the beast.

“Jack!”

“Where are you, kid?”

“Jack!”

His name echoes off expensive oak floors and through lofted ceilings. You tear through the lower floor like someone possessed, ripping open mahogany chests and finely stained china cabinets and the couch cushions of richly-rugged sitting rooms. Anywhere a little boy might fit. Then plenty of places he wouldn’t just for good measure.

Somewhere in the rush you lose John. Over the gurgling rasp of a Braithwaite son’s last breath you hear him shout something from upstairs. You make to run up the winding staircase but stop dead in your tracks when you see Catherine Braithwaite being kicked down them.

Dutch sneers, his lip curled with generational distaste for a man who preaches against revenge. She’s sobbing, spewing vitriol with every shaky breath. All her sons are dead now. You can see it in the gape of her burnt ash mouth. In the flames that lick the polished wood floors from their dropped torches. In the fire reflected back in Dutch’s eyes.

—

Jack isn’t there. Catherine Braithwaite uses her last breaths to gloat that he’s been sold to a man in the city.

Sold.

You watch Dutch let her go, then watch still as she runs screaming into the flames. The house collapses over a shrieking phantom of the Deep South with a groan and a sigh. By the color of the flames it’ll burn for hours yet.

The trees stare as you leave, gorged on blood and ash.

—

Dawn comes blood red and brutal, streaking through the sky with its first light warning. Dutch, John, Hosea, and Arthur are all gathered around the camp table to discuss your next moves. Whatever those are, though, you can’t imagine. John didn’t sleep a wink last night, just staring at tent canvas and stewing in blame. He looks awful. Everyone does.

You’re sat next to Abigail by the campfire. She says nothing, but the hunch of her shoulders and the blue-hot flame of her eyes tells you there’s nothing to be said. Her boy is gone. Missing.

You brought her a bowl of porridge for breakfast, but neither of you is up for eating much. She stares into the fire while it sits untouched in her lap. You push your oats around with the spoon and pretend not to eavesdrop.

Of course Marston’s scared rotten, Arthur says in hushed tones. I am too. We killed all them people— for what? For nothin’. There ain’t no gold here.

For living, Dutch corrects him, and you can’t help but think it’s a shame that not all of you got to that part. The living. Sean is dead and gone forever. For all you know, Jack might be too.

But all of that is put immediately to rest when Lenny walks into camp with two Pinkerton agents at gunpoint.

Milton and Ross, they call themselves, swaggering through the whole of camp like you’re not all outlaws and thieves. Killers. Everyone stands as they pass, slowly circling in like vultures to the promise of violence.

The matching felt bowler hats on their heads can’t hide the pockmarks on Milton’s face nor the smug, bristling mustache on Ross’. The government is surely paying a pretty penny for your capture if the fineness of their clothes is anything to go by. Their shoes are shined and polished. You can’t help but notice the way the red Rhodes clay oozes up beneath the soles and paints them muddy.

“This thing? It’s done,” Milton announces when he makes his way to Dutch.

Dutch barely bothers to turn and face him. He doesn’t stand. Everyone else slowly, slowly creeps closer. One step at a time. All coming together. Vultures. Violence.

Things like this are never just done.

Never.

Milton calls Dutch a lot of things. A shepherd of lost souls. A messiah. Sarcasm drips from the syllables, and you wonder how he might react if you told him Dutch was the only god to answer a single one of your prayers. Even Swanson lost touch with Christ long ago. Now when he falters he begs Dutch Van der Linde for forgiveness. All of you do.

“I’m nothing but a seeker, Mr. Milton,” Dutch finally says.

Milton’s eyes narrow. There's a faint expression you can’t quite place on his face when he replies, “You ain’t much of anything more than a killer, Mr. Van der Linde.”

He offers freedom, then. Three days to run and hide and live like civilized human beings in exchange for Dutch. It’s almost laughable.

Dutch steps forward and every gun in camp cocks. Agent Milton seems suddenly to remember how very much outnumbered and outgunned he is.

“I think your new friend should leave, Dutch,” Ms. Grimshaw says.

Milton calls it a mistake, calls you all fools, but the only foolish mistake you can see is letting them live.

—

John and Arthur leave together after all that. They make for a place called Shady Belle and promise Abigail it’s close to the city where her son is being held. A good spot to camp while everyone does what they can to bring that little boy home.

Looking at Karen, miserable and bleary-eyed drunk, you can’t help but think it’s awfully far from Sean’s grave.

[shuadi99]

Am I the only one who has lost the rage like interest in bridgerton s3, especially with the waiting and ruminating (over ruminating) plus all this unnecessary hating has really mellowed down my interest in bridgerton s3 which I was really excited about as I've been like Penelope most of my life. Well, maybe it's just me.

[reds-skull]

Revenant Side Stories

Story VII: Roba | Void’s Child

[Konchar] [Graves] [Gaz] [Price] [Novikov] [Farah] [AO3]

This one is pretty short, because spoilers but Simon does kill Roba in less than a minute so he didn't time to think about it really :/

There's one more story (that I might even post today because it's so short), and from then on I'll be working on the comic only for part two! Started up uni again so I won't even try to predict when that's gonna be finished lol

English disappointed him.

It was a shame, since Manuel could see how much potential the kid had. Stronger body and mind than his now broken superiors, somehow able to withstand months of torture. It was curious, how it seemed the more the Corporal’s situation seems hopeless, the more he resisted.

That is not to say the rest of his team was better. His fellow Sergeant died about two weeks in, to an infection. The Captain, shot after trying to escape. That would’ve impressed him, if the man got any further than the hallway outside his cell.

So while yes, Riley did last remarkably long, he was disappointing. Such men are no use to Manuel, if they do not learn to obey.

He ordered two of his men to dispose of him, put him alongside Vernon. No need to waste time digging another grave, after all.

There are still a few prisoners left for him to toy with. None as riveting as Riley, of course, some Mexican Special Forces soldiers who started crying for their mother not two hours into their first session. Manuel sighs, letting out a stream of cigar smoke from his lips.

He wonders, briefly, if perhaps killing Riley here would’ve been more beneficial. They’ve all heard tales of revenants, and Reapers, of how certain men will simply refuse to die.

How would he kill him then? Suffocation, while easy, would’ve likely brought on a boring result.

Immolation seemed far more fascinating, but as far as Manuel knows, it would’ve just made the man fire-proof. Nothing you can’t do with extra gear.

No, truly powerful revenants must die in battle, where only supernatural strengths could save them. Ah, if he had a revenant of that capability… one revenant like that equals a hundred men. Then again, he’d need to have a short leash on a revenant like that.

And English proved time and time again, no one is able to leash him.

What a waste.

 A knock on his office door pulls him away from his ruminations, and he watches the men he sent to deal with the subject of his introspection enter the room.

“I assume he’s been dealt with?” Manuel drags his eyes down to the men’s arms, which are covered in dirt.

They nod, “yes, sir. But…”

“What is it?”

“English woke up on transport.”

Oh? He was awake for it?

Manuel waves his hand, dismissing them, “no matter. I’m sure he won’t stay awake for long, if you’ve done your jobs right.”

The men leave, not fast enough for Manuel to miss the glint of fear in their eyes. It mellows out the frustration built up over thinking about the Corporal.

Buried alive… what kind of revenant would that bring? Well, Manuel supposes it is similar enough to suffocation.

He really should consider acquiring some revenants. If not to employ, to at least interrogate. To borrow into the mind of those who have seen death and returned alive… what kind of things could Manuel extract from them?

The possibilities are endless.

For now, he’ll make do with the prisoners he does have. Manuel extinguishes the cigar and places it back in its case, locking the drawer and the door as he leaves the office. His steps are accompanied by sounds of screams and agony. If the soldiers are already reacting like this from the ‘warm-up’ his men are giving them, Manuel truly doesn’t expect they’ll last until next week.

A guard opens the door to the first torture room, where he finds a bleeding man stare up at him with wide eyes full of horror. It takes Manuel back to one of the last sessions he had with Riley.

His hand hurts from the force of the slap, but it is worth just to see the way Riley’s head snaps to the side, his face swollen from hours of beating.

Manuel takes hold of a fistful of dirty blond hair and makes English look at him in the eye.

“Look at you. You don’t even fight back anymore, do you? Just a sickly little dog under my boot. I wonder, would your father even recognized you if I sent him your body?” Manuel goads, a sharp grin on his lips as he asks him with mock concern.

He waits for the spitting, or the tears, even complete apathy is expected at this point, but English doesn’t do any of that.

No, he stares at Manuel for a long moment, something lighting in his eyes for the first time in weeks, and he opens his bloody mouth to laugh.

It takes Manual by surprise, so much so that he doesn’t react for a while, watching Riley choke on his own laughter, the sound turning to wheezing as it finally dies down. Riley smiles somewhat maniacally, and with a croaky voice says, “should I give you his address? Make it easier for the both of us.”

Manuel opens his mouth to ask what the fuck is wrong with him, but English continues, “heard of Agecroft Cemetery and Crematorium? Nice place. Made sure to buy the plot nearest to the dumpster on the other side of the fence for him. It smells like he did when he was alive”

It’s odd, how this is the most he’s heard Riley talk since he got him in this chair. Perhaps he’s finally cracking, god knows it took him far longer than any other soldier he’s worked on before.

“Good to see you still got a sense of humor, English.” Manuel lets go of Riley’s hair, and his head falls, “seeing you’re in a good mood, might be time to start listening to me, eh?”

Riley’s shoulders shake with a silent laugh, and he raises his head to give him a joyless grin, his teeth stained red, “think you didn’t understand last time I told ya mate - Fuck. You. Want that in Spanish? Vete a la mierda, cabrón”

Manuel feels a surge of anger rush forth, and he kicks English in the chest, making the man groan in pain and erasing that fucking smile. He wraps his hands around Riley’s throat, feeling his heartbeat spike.

“You think you’re getting out of this alive, fucker?! Think is anyone coming to save you?!!!”

Riley gasps, his torso contorting as he tries to get away, as if he’s not tied to the steel chair. “N-no.” He chokes out.

“Then why are you still fucking resisting?! You know it will do nothing!!!”

The skin under his fingertips starts to bruise, English’s eyes bulging out when he snarls, “makes… you… m-mad… don’t it?”

Manuel tightens his hold, and English loses consciousness, his eyes rolling up into his skull. He huffs out, anger still simmering within him.

“Marcus!” he calls to the guard beyond the room’s door, “get English to the pit, fucker needs to learn a lesson.”

The guard enters, wordlessly untying Riley and dragging his body out. Manuel’s hand itches for a cigar, maybe something he can sink his teeth into and tear apart. Something that would look at him with fear, the light in its eyes broken, knowing they’re truly doomed.

Not unbridled mirth.

Riley is broken, that much is clear. But he’s not broken the way Manuel intended, not broken in a way he can use.

And things he has no use for? They get discarded, as they should.

Their little dance is coming to an end.

Manuel leaves the room with bloodied fists and an unsatisfied smile. Such pathetic excuses of soldiers don’t deserve a shred of his attention or time, and yet they keep falling into his hands.

If only English… no, best not to think of another failure.

He wipes his hands on a scratchy towel, throwing it at a passing guard with barks of orders. He really needs that fucking cigar.

The office door shuts violently behind him, the hinges creaking. Manuel lets out a loud sigh as he drops to his chair, and after a few moments of simply breathing, he pulls out a cigar and his lighter.

The metal lid is flipped open, and it lights on the third attempt. Manuel brings it closer to the cigar, only for the flame to be extinguished by a sudden gust of wind. He frowns and turns around, has he left the window behind him open?

No, the window is closed. How odd. Manuel turns back.

… Why is it that he still feels cold?

A far off scream makes Manuel’s hand drop the lighter and reach for the pistol at his hip. His mind fires off explanations one by one, as the screaming gets closer, and closer…

Have they been compromised? Are the special forces finally getting revenge on their fallen soldiers? A rival cartel, perhaps?

He doesn’t reach an answer, in the seconds before it all goes dark.

Somewhere in his brain, Manuel can feel none of them were correct.

It hits the office like a wave, drags him into an empty world. Lightless, lifeless, barring a single man.

Uncaring for the howling men at his feet, his guards and prisoners alike succumbing to a dark, inky matter, a man stands. He is encircled by white light, his eyes glow as they unnervingly stare at him.

That… thing is staring at… him.

“ROBA…..”

The voice is distorted, like a hand took claws to the thing’s throat, but Manuel would recognize that voice in any condition.

When it is tinted with rage. When it is bloody and bruised. When it is full of mirth.

His hands shake, their grip on the pistol slipping, his heart beating hard enough that he thinks anything left alive in this realm can hear it.

“E-English?”

Riley, or whatever’s left of him, doesn’t answer. He raises his arm, the fingernails torn like he clawed his way out of that grave, and points to Manuel.

The men on the ground stop squirming. As one, they turn their head to Riley, their gaze following the pointed finger, until their gaze meets him. Their eyes, soulless.

It hits him, then. Riley’s a fucking revenant.

“KILL HIM.”

Hundreds of hands scrape a bottomless void, teeth black and yearning for untainted flesh, feet tugging at darkness materialized, they all rush towards Manuel.

At that moment, he is no longer disappointed. He sees now, that English surpassed anything he could have ever molded him into. 

As the void overcomes him, Manuel Roba feels content.

He was right. He should’ve killed Riley himself.

Manuel laughs at the face of death, not with mirth but with utter horror, tears pulled from his eyes only to freeze, and the last thing he truly sees is a brilliant light, of a man not even death could force to kneel.

What a wonderful monster has he created.

He’s dead.

Simon blinks, and Limbo recedes. He feels… cold. Like the realm never left. It is not uncomfortable, not after the grave.

He tilts his head skyward, his breath fogging up in the Mexican night air, stars twinkling their greetings to him. Everything is finally, blessedly, quiet. He can’t even feel his wounds.

He can’t feel much of anything, anymore. Simon looks down, at his hands. Bloody, dirty, months of torture scarring them beyond recognition.

Are those really his hands?

He’s dead. There’s nothing he can do to him now, locked forever in his Limbo. It will protect him. It will never allow anything to hurt him again.

…What now?

Simon looks to the horizon, no signs of civilization in any direction. He must’ve memorised a map of the area at one point, known where the nearest city was, before that information was replaced by unending hunger and bloodshed.

With nothing but the stars to guide him, Simon chooses to walk in the opposite direction of Roba’s complex. Nothing will stop him now, since he’s dead, and the faster he can rid himself of the sight of that wretched place, the better.

It’s alright, though. Because he is dead.

He is dead.

He…

Simon collapses to the ground, his shoulders shaking, not with sobs, but with muted laughter. He is dead.

Simon is dead. Roba can’t hurt him anymore, death can’t touch him anymore. You cannot kill what has already been slain.

You cannot kill a ghost.

[ducktracy]

I'm sure you've addressed this before:

How come Bugs Bunny is occasionally staring me down with death eyes in the intro of a Looney Tunes cartoon? Why is he so mad?

this ask—like everything else in my inbox—has been ruminating for awhile, and part of that is because i didn’t have an answer! i truly did not know other than “uhhhhh Art Davis animates one version of it :)”. but. i am thrilled to say that i DO have some speculation! and it is complete speculation and interpretation, nothing more, but it’s something! SO

the first short to have that title variant is Tex Avery’s The Heckling Hare. it’s pretty important to note Avery’s involvement here—his Bugs was very wily and combative. it could depend on the needs of the cartoon—he’s pretty cool and calm in A Wild Hare, and at least comparatively so (save for some moments) in The Heckling Hare. Tortoise Beats Hare has him ranting and raving as soon as the cartoon starts, driven by rage and conceit throughout the whole thing; it’s been a few years since i’ve seen All This and Rabbit Stew, and i’ve only seen it once, but my recollection is that Bugs was pretty reactionary in that one too.

i think noting its attachment to The Heckling Hare in particular is also important because the cartoon’s titles follow that same principle—a confrontational Bugs looms over the typography, obscuring the audience’s view and thereby heckling even them, too. likewise, his arms are bent and on his hips, shadow cast at a diagonal angle, which immediately reads as confrontational and aggressive. i don’t think the Bugs on the shield logo was made explicitly for this cartoon and nothing else, but knowing that this short opens with a particularly aggressive tone, it does add some context as to why he behaves the way he does.

MY POINT BEING that Avery’s Bugs is much more aggressive than the Bugs we know today. thus, that was reflected in the opening titles—whereas most titles with cartoon characters in them were pleasant and amiable (Woody Woodpecker pecks holes and laughs! Popeye blows his pipe! Porky—later to be accompanied by Daffy—continually greets the audience with his happy, shining mug!), Bugs greets you with contempt and disdain. you’re intruding on his privacy; he makes a point to remind you that his time could be much better spent chewing carrots and luxuriating rather than entertaining your attention, but he’ll do it anyway.

obviously, Bugs got less abrasive as his personality was explored more in-depth. so, there comes a little bit of a dissonance when stretching into the mid ‘40s or so. that Art Davis variation (basically, the one where Bugs looks like Bugs) is fashioned after a synonymous intro that was more representative of the Bugs of its time. by 1945 or whenever the intro started appearing, he was much more mellow and less confrontational/disdainful, so having him seem so angry does kind of feel out of nowhere. but it isn’t! it just rides on the coattails of a previous variant that was more applicable for its time

[secretmellowheart]

I only wish you could see me now. I'm all grown up! I'm a real adult. Are you proud of me? Will you visit me in my own apartment? 😊 I've been trying my best to make you proud even if we'll never meet! I'm glad you came and with this I'll be leaving our memories behind. Or at least attempt to! 😊

[cyberrat]

Now that the dust on season 1 has settled a little bit and I‘ve had time to ruminate on my nasty headcanons, I find myself circling back to the question how a relationship between Angel and Husk would look like.

Or more precisely how it could come about in the first place.

I feel like Angel would be way less ‚Angel‘ around Husk. Like he‘ll still be hyper sexual every now and then to really get beneath Husk‘s fur, but not as obnoxious as he was before.

Husk would probably be way more mellow and reserved about his crush because he figures there‘s never going to come anything of it anyway.

Meanwhile Angel will definitely hyper analyze their interactions and get DepressedTM over his lack of clear answers.

I think they would spend night after night staying up together at the bar for way too late, gossiping about the others.

When they kiss it is because their both loopy on sleep deprivation and Husk hooks his claw in the front of Angel‘s jacket to pull him in.

[gynandromorph]

You’ve mentioned before that drake would be a far better god than jessie and would deal better with absolute power than most of your other characters, I find this incredibly interesting and I wondered if you could explain why a bit more?

yeah, sure. it's probably going to be a bit incomprehensible because it's 3 am right now (it is no longer 3 am but half of it was written at 3 am and i'm still stupid). drake's ocpd has compelled xem to feel obsessively invested in moral righteousness and to want an extreme amount of control over xyr environment. it's given xem a lot of incentive to think about what they would do differently, how they would make reality better, etc.

so, the main way that drake would be better than jessie as a god is because drake would care more about being a genuinely good god. xe is also not as impulsive or emotional as jessie; xe deliberates at length even for small interactions, and, while this can be debilitating in day-to-day life, if you were an omnipotent being totally exempt from the laws of time, this would not really be an issue. this quality also makes xem more capable of accurate insight and self-judgement.

i talked about shiloh and how as a god she would probably be a nightmarish sadist -- one might see her personality as similar to drake's because she's also more mellow and pattern-oriented. the difference between shiloh and drake (as well as jessie and drake) is that what drake finds gratifying is just worlds apart. drugs, sex, violence and power are things a lot of people find gratifying, but drake is someone who finds like... organizing books by size and color on the shelf gratifying. moving at a slower pace in general, unpredictable explosive experiences that feel exciting and interesting to the two lesbians feel overwhelming and unpleasant to xem. the avoidance of possible distress from possible mistakes is often a source of the gratification, so a lack of novelty wouldn't hit xem as hard, i think. basically being an ethical being WOULD BE what drake finds gratifying as a god because it's what xe finds gratifying already, which is a huge advantage. the fact that xyr desire for control is projected onto xyr environment is just a bonus -- since xe interprets the problems as coming from outside the house, xe's less likely to focus on inner desires for decision-making.

something drake has had to ponder more than many of my other characters is the fact that no one ever asks to be born, and most aren't entirely happy with what they're born with. i think it occurs to most people at some point that no one asks to be born, but drake has spent cumulative years ruminating on this. i find xyr take on godhood and how i conceptualize it interesting based on that even on its own, because drake wants a world where every single thing chooses to be born with an adequate amount of information to make the choice.

i've spent here or there thinking about how xe would try to go about doing this, and so far it's involved some kind of AI-like network which would approximate the entire lifespan of an individual without possessing a consciousness or emotional world of its own, then relay that in a chemical format. if the projected life is suitable for this hypothetical person and they'd most likely consent to living the life, the chemical info enters a matching receptor on a zygote and it progresses. this would happen several if not thousands of times during the process of producing a conscious being, i think. this is believable enough to me w/how much info dna itself can hold, and that wasn't designed with any intelligence. that's the best way i've come up with the chicken and the egg dilemma wrt conscious choice to be born thus far. the other component i've thought about is probably making life able to move about 4-dimensionally, essentially giving conscious beings the ability to time travel as a regular form of locomotion. i gotta imagine this isn't too big a deal when you can alter the laws of physics to your liking. i know that drake would also get rid of (nonconsensual) death not just by canceling it now, but reviving every single conscious creature that has ever died. oh, earth wouldn't support infinitely multiplying life? god can fix that. death is the only thing that makes life meaningful? no it doesn't. not in drake's world. meaning is a sensation in our heads subject to alterations, just like every emotion. some things might not want to live forever? some things might want to feel sadness, pain, anger, and suffering? well, it'd be immoral for drake to decide how they should feel by getting rid of these unpleasant emotions, so xe will give them the choice to die if they want to, and the choice to undie, probably handled by the same network that estimates if they want to be born - the choice to feel sad or opt out, the choice to feel pain or opt out, etc. to drake, this would not only resolve the "suffering gives life meaning" argument, but would also functionally prevent any given subject from forcing another subject to feel anything it doesn't want to. drake would yield a lot of power to xyr subjects, because the power differential between a god and its sims in a sandbox is inherently going to be an abuse of that power in exchanges. you could argue that xe would do well with absolute power because xe would make xyr power... Not absolute relatively quickly after some things were stabilized. given the idea that maybe they could not choose anything at all, like how a fictional character can't choose anything, i think that xe would resort to breaking up xyr infinite amount of choice into tiny pieces compartmentalized away from xem, like someone dissociating but intentionally, and putting that into the subjects instead. this would be an odd limitation, though, and would preclude omnipotence. i just think the decisions xe would make based on xyr sense of ethics would be neat because of how unyielding those moral "rules" are and other elements of xyr personality.

[weepylucifer]

for the drabble ask meme: 22 or 37 with Steban and Ulixes? :3

22. “I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice.”

It is a night like any other - if anything, this night is more mellow than their usual meetings. Finals week has just come and gone and left the both of them too drained for heated debate or fervent analysis. They'd talked about this week's reading a little, messed around with the matchboxes in a way that was more playful than anything, and quickly abandoned the endeavor in favor of more or less... just hanging out. And Ulixes likes talking theory with Steban, and he knows it's important, but he also finds himself wishing they'd... just hang out more often. It's simple, it's nice. It's good to remember sometimes that they're not just comrades but also friends.

Steban is smoking a cigarette and telling a meandering anecdote about a class that Uli is not in, and Uli is absorbing maybe every other sentence of it, nodding and humming in the appropriate places. He cannot help this. Steban enraptures him endlessly, not his words this time, but the shape of him, his profile softened by the warm, low light of the reading lamp. The way smoke spills past his slightly parted lips, the flash of teeth that occasionally glints in the light as he speaks. His skin looks warm, his throat inviting where the collar of his shirt falls open, poised for ready, starving teeth to sink into. Surely Steban means nothing by it when he leaves the first few buttons of his shirt open like that, surely he's not trying to be alluring, to presume he is would be reading too much into it. Surely he's just too lost in thought or too sleepy in the mornings to do those buttons up correctly.

Great, now he's thinking about Steban in the mornings, hazy and soft with sleep, coming awake gradually and indolently, yawning, stretching. Maybe he sleeps in the nude. Maybe sometimes he wakes up aroused and takes himself in hand, when he's got the time. Maybe he does it in the shower...

Ulixes can't pretend these thoughts are new, or that thinking them even shocks him anymore. Those grooves in his mind are well-worn, paths smooth from frequent treading. It's already a habit to let himself get lost like this in ruminance upon his comrade's body, to perhaps even dream up scenarios in which he reaches out a daring hand and touches--

"Uli, are you okay?"

"Hmm?" Ulixes jolts out of his reverie. Apparently Steban has finished speaking and is now looking straight at him.

"You're kind of... staring at me," Steban says. "Is something wrong?"

Uh-oh. Oh no. Ulixes has been told his stare can be... disconcerting, with his glasses. The last thing he wants is to weird Steban out. "No," he says, hoping to salvage the situation, "Just... thinking."

"Ah," Steban says and nods and looks away, and for a moment it seems like he'll leave it at that, but then he continues, "No, actually, I think it's time we talked about this."

"What?"

"It's only, I've observed this before, and something is up, isn't it? I've seen the way you look at me when you think I don't notice... it's been a frequent occurrence, lately, and, there's really only one conclusion to be drawn from it..."

Oh, god, here it comes. He has been found out. Ulixes feels his insides quake with fright, but he can't deny that some part of him is absurdly excited. Had wanted this to happen, even. Now the dice have fallen, his secret is uncovered, his love and devotion laid bare to the world, and now Steban will pass judgement, deem him worthy of his attentions or cast him away. Either way: after this, there will be no more guessing and fretting. Ulixes will know where he stands.

"...You secretly hate me, right?" Steban says.

What.

"What," Ulixes repeats.

Steban wrings his hands. He looks extremely concerned. "I mean... you look at me like that because I've done something wrong, don't you? Do you find me lacking, in terms of ideology? Have I done something to offend you? Is my theory unsound? Whatever it is, be honest with me about it, and I'll correct the behavior." He's almost crying now, Ulixes observes with a terrible start. "I know I'm difficult, but..."

Uli has to interrupt now. "You, difficult?"

"I know I'm not easy to get along with..."

"You are the easiest person in the world to get along with," Ulixes says, because that is his truth.

"I know I'm petty. I drive people away. Maurice... Felix and Zuzanna..."

"They just weren't the right fit for this group, that's not your fault..."

"But I don't want to... I can't drive you away like that," Steban continues. "For you, I'll critique and work on myself. You're my only... my best friend. I don't know what I'd do without you."

His appeal concluded, Steban looks down and fidgets forlornly with the stub of his cigarette. This is a disaster, Ulixes thinks. He expected that Steban would figure him out sooner or later and that all he had to do was wait. He never fathomed that Steban would get it this wrong.

(But, having made a study of Steban's personality, perhaps he should have taken the possibility into account. He knows how Steban can get sometimes, when his gloomier moods do his thinking for him. Ulixes mentally slaps himself for not being more aware. If he doesn't take care of his comrade's emotional needs, then what's he even doing??)

The issue is so grave and demands so loudly to be corrected that suddenly, putting a hand on Steban's and saying "Actually, I've been secretly in love with you" is easy.

[faillen]

it’s way past midnight but i’ve still got a lot of hours of being conscious ahead of me (trying to not miss a redeye flight lol) so this is a great time to do a bit of picking my own brain apart via projecting onto a character lmao

anyway. i think Pran does fine in Singapore the first couple of months. he’s so busy with the new city and job and home away from home that he does fine. his friends are available for hours long video calls. there’re so many things for him to explore. he comes up with a very religious cleaning/errand schedule for himself. he holds himself to accepting an invitation to after-work drinks at least once every two weeks, if not more.

he might not have a lot of people he’s super close to in the city, but he doesn’t feel super disconnected from the folks he usually leans on for emotional support. Pat is always happy to call for hours and they keep up a steady texting chain. Ditto for Ink and Wai. there’re groupchats chock full of memes and complaints about the transition to post-grad life.

it’s not that he doesn’t get homesick--he does--but he doesn’t have the time to really ruminate on that. there is so much that is new and constantly asking for his attention that it really only pops up on a very quiet night where his apt feels a little too big, or when he sees pictures of everyone out and about online and it hits a little too hard, or when he tastes something that’s just to the left of his mom’s cooking.

it’s after he’s a few months in--when he feels relatively settled at work, and doesn’t have as much of a drive to explore Singapore, and his routine is basically set, that the loneliness starts to creep in. it’s when singapore feels less like a novel place that he’s in and more like the place he’s living that, funnily enough, he starts to feel a bit more unmoored.

and though he’s beginning to make friends at this point, the newness of those relationships--and all the anxieties and worries that come with trying to figure out the boundaries of a new friendship + taking the leap of trust that people enjoy spending time with him as much as he enjoys spending time with them (okay full disclosure yeah that last bit about people enjoying time with him might actually be about me but this is my post and my self-psychoanalysis via Pran Parakul Siridechawat so I can write what i want)--make the overall sense of isolation worse.

they leave him longing for the security of the long-term and comfortable relationships that he no longer has access to. the easy intimacy of laying around someone’s apartment for a few hours, or doing something without worrying about pretenses. on the flipside, the people back home who miss him are entering a period where that feeling is less sharp and while he’s glad that it’s all sort of mellowed out a bit, there’s also a lot of dissonance b/w how he’s feeling about being in a new country on his own, and how others are feeling about him not being where he used to always be.