#unsure if this will get edited out into oblivion hehe remains to be seen

[johnbronze]

Blue Skies Excerpt

HEYYY thiam nation / Blue Skies nation!! so today is January 15, the anniversary of the great molasses flood, and I’m not quite ready to release the chapter that this snippet of Blue Skies at Twilight is part of today, like I planned, but I didn’t wanna let this very timely meme-meta moment go by... so here’s a little teaser of a scene from an upcoming chapter<3

(there’s a little bit of lore/timeline clarification in here too >;3c ... hehe)

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“Hey, since we’re playing twenty-questions… how old are you? I never asked that either—” Theo hmms out loud, laughing at the tail end and lifting himself up onto his elbows to look over at Liam. Liam blinks, looking a little caught out with Theo’s eyes on him. He’s got a faint bit of color blossoming at his cheekbones, and Theo watches him, amused.

“Well,” he drawls out, “I’m pretty sure you just skipped over my turn to ask you somethin’, but I’ll let you off this once…” Theo flashes a crooked sort of teasing look, then tears his eyes away, looking upwards as if he’s thinking out loud. He ticks the potential answers off on his hands, watching the halo of stage light peek through gaps between his fingers as he raises his arms again. “…There’s how long I’ve been around, and then there’s what year I was born, or how old I was when the Doctors took me.” He turns back to catch the way Liam’s mouth opens in an ‘o’ shape.

“Right, gotcha. Well, I know it’s kinda rude to ask a lady her age, but I wasn’t sure if that also applies to…um…” Theo grins even more at the stilted way Liam trails off, awkwardly unsure of how to get out of the hole he’s dug himself with the comparison. The blush deepens prettily on Liam’s face, and Theo rolls over, closer, to brace on his elbows, his stomach bare against the chilly expanse of the stage, where his shirt has ridden up. He props his chin up on his fists, furrows his brow. The teasing tone comes too easily, a Cheshire grin barely held back as he speaks again, jaw bouncing up and down against his hands. “Hey now, everything’s jake, Li! I’m no lady. I’m not gonna hit you with my pocketbook for askin’.”

Liam laughs, copies his motion, turning over to lay on his stomach as well.

Theo continues, as Liam settles: “...I was 22 when they took me, in early 1920, so… I was born in 1898, and oh what a year—”

“ —Oh my god!” Liam gasps, drums his hands against the stage in a frenzy of sudden excitement. “Wait, so you must have been in Boston on January 15th, 1919... and you were, like, old enough to remember the Great Molasses Flood?”

Theo jolts, absolutely dumbfounded. “What…? I—” his jaw works, and Theo manages: “...how do you even know about that? People still talk about it?” ‘you’re the weirdest person I’ve ever met’ and ‘maybe it’s not people, maybe it’s just you, again’ bounce around inside of him too. He closes his mouth with a head shake; makes them stay there.

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