ofcannon

[ofcannon]

riggs.

he’s about to take another sip of his drink - a pina colada, naturally, because everyone knows most of the fruit behind the counter of the wild pony is for him when he orders a drink - but mickey speaking has him stopping short, a snort escaping his lips as he shakes his head. “i don’t know if flirting is a rhetorical question, mick,” he mutters, punctuating the end of his sentence with his drink, the cool liquid slipping down his throat and giving him the courage he didn’t normally have when he was sober. “why’ve you got a fuckin’ lint roller in your pocket?”

         “flirting?” mickey repeats, as if he’s never even heard of the term before, shocked, amused, and slightly flattered by the notion that riggs might flirt with him. “aw, gee. i ain’t good with determining tone with stuff like that... i get all flustered and the like.” still, a small smile cuts itself into his features, emphasising the laughter lines that split around his mouth, as he dips his head into a sip of his beer to hide his embarrassment. “animals,” mickey responds after barely a second of thought. if there’s anything he’s good with, it’s non-human animals ; a trait he’d surely inherited from striker, or maybe georgia, but certainly not from their good-for-nothing father. “hairs get everywhere. all over jeans, sofa, bed, the whole kit an’ caboodle. my little dog scoobs is one hell of a sweetheart, but he don’t half malt like a balding woman’s pussy.”

#mickey & riggs. #tw suggestive #tw nsfw #riggs 001.

[ofcannon]

Ryan Gosling in The Place Beyond the Pines (2012).

#⥂ mickey cannon. ╱ aesthetics.

[ofcannon]

sybil.

for: @roswellstarters ··· location: puhlman ranch time: afternoon

Although she often separated her research from her daily walk with Joan, the golden retriever, Sybil really didn’t feel like spending so much time away from her trailer that day. The “crash” site was something she was looking forward to see, since she planned to draw it in detail in her graphic novel. No, her graphic novel wasn’t about Roswell, but it was based on Roswell, and she wanted to get the vibes right. Sybil took out her camera and started taking photos, planning to sit down and draw it when she got home. “Why have I taken so long to visit this place?” She said to herself out loud, then realized that made her sound crazy and tried to play it off.

      to the cannon brothers, the puhlman ranch was like a second home. mickey couldn’t count the amount of times they’d scrounged dinner there, hitched over hay bales with cardboard cutlery. with striker, the farmhand, putting in a hard graft down at the ranch, and mickey called in every so often to oil up the moving parts of a combine harvester, it was hardly a shock to spot a cannon about the place, cornel of corn popped in the corner of mickey’s mouth in place of his usual cigarette. he was looking for his brother when he happened upon sybil, oil slicked up to his elbows, only stopping when he spotted the camera in her hands, sizing it up against his rather inferior model back home. “you shoot on film?” colour him surprised — though perhaps he shouldn’t have been ; these touristy types always had the fancy gear and little clue how to use it  — still, he found himself gravitating towards the wide-eyed woman, scaling the landscape as if to see it through her viewfinder. “that’s ace. i do a bit a bit of shooting myself,” clearing his throat, mickey was suddenly rendered self-conscious, chewing the inside of his cheek as he tugged at a stray curl that sprouted from his crown. “—nothin’ fancy like. got myself a little dark room at the garage, if you ever find yourself needing to develop some prints.” though she likely had all that sorted, a rich-lookin’ thing like her.

#⥂ mickey cannon. ╱ threads. #mickey & sybil. #sybil 001.

[ofcannon]

striker.

location: outside the cannon trailer, tripp’s trailer park

with: @ofcannon​

days had passed since striker’s disappearing act and , although it wasn’t uncharacteristic for him to poof into a cloud of cigar smoke , the radio silence sowed seeds of concern given his and mickey’s last conversation . testosterone-fuelled arguments were commonplace among the three boys that had lived atop of each other the best part of twenty years , yet this had been different — striker’s threat of self-destruction , his blatant ignoring of texts , calls and voicemails , his skipping of work and neglect towards ranch responsibilities . he had either been lying in a ditch , dead , for the best part of a week , or holed up with somebody else ; thankfully for the cannons , it had been the latter . returning to the trailer park with his tail between his legs ( and quite a significant , lopsided limp ) striker’s dark-rimmed eyes met with the middle brother’s , a long exhalation at the promise of confrontation . if he had it his way he would have simply slipped back into the trailer undetected , caught up on sleep , treated himself to an underarm and between-the-legs flannel pat-down ; instead sriker knew his brother would be owed an explanation he couldn’t give . “ before y’ ask — “ torn converse , toes splattered with dried blood , kicked against compacted dirt , “ — i’ve been with colby , ‘n i’m okay for the most part . broken ribs , probably , but nothin’ i can’t handle , “ such injuries would be , and had always been , dealt with nonchalance . “ micks .. you really fucked me up with what you said t’ me . i know y’all didn’t mean to get under my skin like that , but .. “ shoulders lifted in a defeated shrug , “ .. i ain’t felt that shitty in a long while . “ 

          in the spring, he’d built a pen outside the trailer, a hen house just large enough to hold eight chicks nestled between rusty siding and a makeshift workshop where the cannons intermittently spent their time. winter had come and gone, the babies kept inside for fear that they might freeze, their yellow-bellies now nestled among grass and dandelion if only to avoid lance packing a bag and leaving the too-cramped trailer altogether, or striker stumbling in drunk and squashing one of the little fellas beneath his bootsoles. the latter was no longer an issue, hours stretching into days until the idle reflection that striker wasn’t around became an anxious preoccupation. mickey was outside, tending to the chickens, agnetha perched over his freddie mercury tattoo, when familiar converse cut across the dirt and bisected mickey’s vision, his eyes snapping up to meet his brothers. for a moment, neither of them said anything, mickey’s mouth wriggling like a worm was trapped beneath the skin as he tried to form a phrase that might communicate his relief. “ah, hell, striker,” was all that cut from the middle cannon’s lips as he plopped agnetha down amongst her brothers and pushed himself to his feet. “your boss been calling. i din’t know whatta say. i said you had some kinda stomach bug. shittin’ out both ends like a donkey. hell knows what he thought…” scratching behind his ear, mickey drew his eyes down to his boots, thick with the crust of the desert after a night spent riding the highway with riggs. “yeah. i maybe thought as much.” guilt gathered in the pit of his stomach, hard and tangible as a stone. “i… i said shit i should not have said. and for that, i’m sorry. i weren’t thinkin’. i’m never thinkin’. and it hurt you.” forcing his chin, mickey found his brother’s eyes, hands tucking uneasily into the pockets of his cargo pants if only to stopper the urge to scratch at his own skin. “i’m sorry, striker. hell knows i’m sorry. you ain’t done gone and did nothin’ to deserve that.”

#⥂ mickey cannon. ╱ threads. #mickey & striker. #striker 002.

[ofcannon]

ᴍɪᴄᴋᴇʏ ᴄᴀɴɴᴏɴ     𝕗𝕥.    𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐧 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬.

    ❝ THE CANNON BROTHERS barely had a penny to their name , and the roof over their head was merely a janky strip of sheet metal , but they were happy.  [...] petty theft , tipping cows and now bull wrangling weren’t the most conventional of family bonding exercises — he had never taken the boys bowling , or for a nice meal , or for a game of football with rolled-up shirts as goalposts , but that didn’t discredit his attempts at showing the boys love in the only way he knew how. ❞   — ems.   ( @strikercannon /  @babycannxn  )

#⥂ mickey cannon. ╱ aesthetics. #⥂ mickey cannon. ╱ musings. #tw alcohol

[ofcannon]

riggs.

@ofcannon​   ,   sc.   ( location : the wild pony )

“is that a mirror in your pocket? because i can see myself in your pants.”

          “a mirror?” mickey repeated as a sharp indent creased between his brows. “uh... let me see, i got a bag of dog treats, some lip balm, a lint roller...” mickey began, listing off items as he busied his hands in the pockets of his wax jacket. “...two sets o’ keys, a coupla’ nickels... wha’chu need a mirror for anyway? you’re lookin’ mighty fine to me.” a look of confusion passed over mickey’s expression.  “oh, oh wait. was that one of those rheta-hor-ical question?”

#clueless baby boy. doesn't even know riggs is flirting. he'd go bright red if he realised. #⥂ mickey cannon. ╱ threads. #mickey & riggs. #riggs 001.

[ofcannon]

striker.

tiny cheeps sung against his ear , the pecks of a beak — the size of a grain of rice — against his earlobe . the trio of boys , on the surface , may have seemed like giants , like brutes , like three men that favoured violence and were perpetually bloody ; these were the moments the rest of roswell didn’t see , where they were tender towards livestock and shared anecdotes of a past , forgotten life like tortilla chips . up until now striker’s dating life had been rather stale , supplemented by the occasional bar hookup and drunken endeavour . mickey didn’t need to know that him finding dates the ‘ old fashioned way ‘ involved taking them to the restroom , closing the pair into the last stall , and pounding his partner until they were both seeing stars . although mickey had overheard many a yeehaw in his time striker , tonight , chose modesty . “ well , it ain’t goin’ so bad , “ the male responded , “ better than any grindin’ or whatever you’re on about . i ain’t got the face for dating apps , “ nor did he have the phone or the technological know-how ; he’d protest it if anyone called him old , though , for his technophobe ways . he was only in his forties , after all — however humorous it was to tease the ‘ old ‘ guy for his inability to touch-type or connect to the internet it wasn’t his advanced years that made him so , instead the lack of anything electric ( other than stoves and the occasional radio ) before they ran away . “ those apps are only for fuckin’ anyway , right ?? “ as if his approach was any different . he had forgotten half the faces ( and even more of the names ) of his many exploits , teetering into the hundreds now he was into his fortieth year .

overly bubbly and bitter cheap beer was sipped from the open can . the vessel was twisted in the direction of the chick who dug its pink claws into striker’s shoulder , nudged its beak against the metal , then turned away with a cute pale-yellow expression of offence . shrugging , almost causing the little thing to fall right off its perch , he took another gulp before resting his arm on the edge of the couch . “ ‘course i remember our run in texas . i weren’t scared of ‘im getting tetanus , i jus’ didn’t want him bleedin’ all over my best flannel . we patched him up good ‘n’ proper , though — cannon hospital . we were kickin’ each other in the head arguing over who was gonna get the sofa . had to piss in the sink ‘cus it was too dangerous goin’ to the outhouse alone , and none of us wanted to leave lance to his own devices with our jeans ‘round our ankles , “ although times couldn’t be labelled as ‘ good ‘ they made great memories , vignettes the brothers could look back on throughout their time on the run . they had never found a true home until now , all three of them squeezed into the shittiest trailer in the lot ( the only one they could afford given their meagre savings ) yet finding solace in the truth that , no matter what , they were together . sanctuary lay in the hearts of the brothers — wherever they were , home was ; for now it was roswell , but who knew what laid ahead for them the next year , or the one after that . their existences were governed by shrugs and ‘ fuck-its ‘ and there seemed no change in sight . “ so i take it we ain’t goin’ to the hotel , then ?? we’re stickin’ it out here ?? if that’s the case i’m gonna have to dig out some of my copies of ‘ reverse cowgirl monthly ‘ for .. midnight reading , “ 

the cannons had never been big into documenting. memories were made in the present, not paging through nostalgia for a bygone past. they had one photograph of georgia cannon between them holed up in striker’s wallet. pictures of their childhood were a thing of myth. perhaps the lack of dog-eared snapshots depicting them through the years was why the middle cannon had taken up the habit of recording pockets of time later in life — a makeshift dark room in his pay-per-month garage — so that any kids he might one day bear would have something of their past to hold onto. needless to say, they didn’t keep a photograph of stephen cannon senior’s likeness, but as mickey had recently ( clumsily ) attested, it was hardly warranted. the deep curve between brows was etched into striker’s face, the sharp set of his jaw was evident in lance. mickey was all georgia, blue-eyed and soft-featured, honey-blonde from the day he was born until the summer at seventeen when he reached for peroxide and colour booked himself into a new man.

“good memory,” mickey noted, his eyes on the shot of striker and the bird as he flipped the side button to lock his phone. their history was like those palimpsests. you could scratch out the old lore and write new scripture over it, but still the etching of of the old words lay visible underneath. he’d read about them one long evening in middle school, holed up in the library until dark when he didn’t have a bed to call his own, poring over books in the hope that one day he might escape into one of them, an ink and paper boy who could grab a quill and reconfigure his backstory. mickey didn’t bother to argue that striker’s face was as good for dating apps as any — the self-hatred his brother harnessed ran deeper than a surface level wound — and simply tipped his can instead, commenting only that “lance took the good genes”. boyish good looks and a lack of the shit that hardened the soft clay of a boy into the rough and sharpened shape of a sculpted man. mickey and striker had been made old by the things no child should have to witness. he supposed he could thank georgia for his tenderness, striker for the lessons he learned from her and passed down to the rest of them when their infant brains struggled to fill in the gaps in a georgia cannon jigsaw that lacked all the pieces. 

“hey now. never say never. old man rupert down at fornax met his wife on one o’ those apps for fuckin’.” taking a swig of his beer, mickey kicked off his boots which were thick with desert earth, and lifted his feet ( socks darned and later re-darned over the rips across the toes ) to rest them against the coffee table. “you know i ain’t no religious man, but i’ll bet that if you’re lookin’ for somethin’, ninety-nine per cent o’ the time it’ll find you.” chewing his cheek, mickey thought of selena, her hand splayed on his stomach and a silent ache for it to sink lower. for six years she’d written to him, though they were nothing more than friends — neither did mickey ever imagine they would be, until a photograph carrying the loose shape of her form accompanied a letter he’d received ten months previous. wetting his lips and clearing his throat, he cleared the image of selena from his thoughts like a cat smacking water, and clipped his attention instead of striker and the chick, it’s beak turned in disgust from the offered can of beer. “he don’t want no beer, striker, he ain’t of age.” not that had ever stopped the cannons from drinking, cans covered in brown paper bags and swigged in the back of a pick up truck as the three of them passed around a single cigarette. “watch yourself. you’re a bad influence.” scarcely had it been said though and a laugh was rumbling low in mickey’s chest, pitching into a giggle almost as atrocious as his brother’s. “you couldn’t even fit him in one o’ your shirts these days! size o’ that boy.” even though lance was only a touch taller than striker, mickey continued along the same trail of thought, an image of lance in plaid two sizes too small, his arms billowing out the ends like comical sausage hands. reaching over, mickey opened his palm and held it against striker’s shoulder, giving the chick passage to wriggle on to his hand. “i’d say what they been feedin’ him, but it’s just the same old chilli-stew-curry megamix as usual.”  

#⥂ mickey cannon. ╱ threads. #mickey & striker. #striker 001.

[ofcannon]

WINTER & MICKEY ; on more than a few occasions on their fishing trips, winter's fallen asleep on mickey. she's always mad because she actually enjoys fishing with him, BUT it really just goes to show how much she trusts him because she does NOT fall asleep around anyone bc she's afraid of looking ugly in her sleep and she can't handle anyone seeing her as anything less than perfect, but she trusts mickey enough to do exactly that. so whenever she starts feeling particularly drowsy, she just shifts and leans over until her head is in his lap and promptly falls asleep

ohhh.... mickey loves fishing, and he totally gets how hard it can be to open up and trust people because he struggles with that, too. always sits with his back to a wall so he can't be ambushed or taken by surprise, and i think his quiet nature is a result of being quite untrusting because both of his primary caregivers weren't there in the ways he needed them to be. i think if she fell asleep on mickey while fishing he'd probably leave her there for a bit until he was sure she wouldn't stir and then... set her head down on one of their rucksacks or a picnic blanket. lets her snooze while he catches some fish for their lunch.

#headcanons. #mickey & winter.

[ofcannon]

if you had to pick between your mother and father, who would you save?

“mama. no doubt. there's not even a question about it. i'd save georgia every time. our old man... he's beyond redemption. y'know, some people just ain't worth savin'.”

#⥂ mickey cannon. ╱ musings.

[ofcannon]

* DIE WITH YOUR MASK ON IF YOU’VE GOT TO .

bellbottoms - the jon spencer blues explosion | i fought the law - the clash | till i die - machine gun kelly | this ain’t a scene, it’s an arms race - fall out boy | save yourself , i’ll hold them back - my chemical romance | king for a day - pierce the veil, kellin quinn | loverboy - you me at six | you know what they do to guys like us in prison - my chemical romance | chase me - danger mouse, run the jewels | people who died - the jim carroll band | gang related - logic | gansta - kehlani | ¿ - bring my the horizon, halsey | bleed american - jimmy eat world | bad blood - taylor swift | throne - bring me the horizon | heathens - twenty one pilots | war - grandson | f**k me up - highly suspect | kill everyone - hollywood undead | young and menace - fall out boy | paranoia - a day to remember | bang bang - green day | folsom prison blues - small town titans | born for greatness - papa roach | 6:00 - grandson | corpus christi - billie joe armstrong | made an america - FEVER 333 | body bag - beartooth | muthafucka - beware of darkness | fingernails - DON BROCO | you, me & the class war - boston manor | rebels with a cause - dropkick murphys | in the end - black veil brides

( listen ) — with. @laraxfitzgerald & @alevfm & @ofcannon & @sparrowmoore

#⥂ mickey cannon. ╱ aesthetics. #YEAAAAA`!!!!! #this is so so sexy...

[ofcannon]

selena.

So the peach of girlhood had never been soft or ripe,     but ripped apart and spoken to like it was god.       Survival is a god to her,      but gods are often noticeably dictating fate.     This god,      she wants to say,      had left her burnt.     It had left her heart in ashes and her memories coating the walls like black mold.      It was not a blissful feeling she had felt when she shifted after those waves of tragedies.       The moon mocked her and as the claws of war grew long and sharp,        she grew otherworldly and filled with sand.     Paranoia was leaking from her in bucketfuls,      if one were to lick their tongue over her skin it would be lemon-sour.      There was something wicked inside of her now.    Something that grief had transformed into,      angry at that wolf-soul,      angry at the loneliness.     Guilt sedated by more guilt,       and eventually guilt became something that was easier to lock away.       She isn’t an unkind person,    but she is difficult to contain.        This is a truthfulness that she chews on and swallows without wincing.      Although,     before there were many times when she wanted to keep whatever sweetness that had kept her youthful.        Whatever timid nature had arrived only around those she was comfortable with.      The shy laughter,      the admiration,       the profoundly revering imitations.       She was watchful of her tongue back then,     but she had bloomed,    wilted,     and decomposed in the span of a handful of years.     Where one mass grave was dug,       she had walked out of a smaller one.      Now,      she eats only fresh kills from men who think they are able to collect her in their palms like rainwater,       the rawness of her hunger aching inside of her like a wound not yet healed.       Or a blister that meets the heat of boiling water.       This self-awareness is quite different,      one could say,     than her years of survival.           She senses it now,       that muddied fear of acknowledgement that washes over them both.    Selena had sent letters,   endless bundles of letters all those years to the middle Cannon.     Photos too,    blurred and grainy images that occasionally held the loose form of thighs and the plumpness of her ass.    There could almost be anonymity to the photos,     if not for the sightings of her bottom lip tucked between her teeth,     or the coy mischievousness of her eyes.     The captions,    of course,   were vague and motioned only towards want and ache,    but those words were only words,    right?    She hadn’t been expecting anything solidified when she returned.    She hadn’t been expecting the warmth of his mouth or the roughness of his calloused fingers as they touched her like she touched herself all those times    -    alone,    only with the wind billowing against the walls of the temporary shelters to mask the sound of her moans.     He wouldn’t say anything,    and she remained mute.    They only shared the knowledge that somewhere inside that trailer were pictures of the most vulnerable side of her,    entrusted in the capable hands of Mickey Cannon.      She is overwhelmingly attune to her body around him,     the baring of her throat,   the sway of her hips as she follows behind him    -    enjoying the path he’s made for her,    a guard guiding an empress.     ‘Is that what you were doing while I was away,     Mickey?      Thinking about what my blood might taste like?’   A tease,     mostly,    but her eyes are sharply trained on the slope of his jaw and then down to the broadness of his shoulders.     She doesn’t mean to dissect him,     but her attention sticks to him like a fly on tape.    Eager to see what little movements others might miss,    desperate to feel at home once more in between the long grass and the brown marshlands.    ‘Yours would be coconut.    You pretend to have a tough exterior,    but I know how sweet you are.   Down to your very bones.     I think this is the first time I’ve talked about blood without it being about someone I need to patch up in front of me.      I’d say it’s refreshing,    but I think I’d sound a little depressing,    hm?’     Her laugh is let out slowly,    a quieter version of her usual belly-laugh.      There’s denial here that’s thick and lumpy in her throat like a sugar cube,    her gums ache to bite down,    but she’s too afraid of the consequences.     Besides,   this yearning she feels is only part of settling in.    She must readjust,    remind herself that what was said in the letters was never promised,    and some things are better kept to herself.    ‘Are you saying I bother you?      Don’t break my heart like that.’   A feigned expression of shock flows over her face,   lips parting slightly and melting into a smile after a second or two.      ‘I’ll remember that the next time you come to me with something broken,    honey!’      A lilt in her words as she murmurs the disingenuous threat,    hands already prepared to set a broken nose,    or wrap up a sprain,   or clean a cut.    She is talented in mending the open wounds,    not so much in translating the ones underneath the skin    -    like her desires,     or the way she feels when he glances out on the water and goes quiet.     What creator made him that way?     So predictable,    and yet built entirely out of labyrinths.     She,    the moon-woman and he,     the man too made up of corn mazes and grassy hills.        Her boots sink into the morass,     the breeze picking up softly as it curls into her hair and brings more loose strands out to dance across her cheeks.     She holds a reed in between her fingers,     rolling it back and forth out of an absent habit.       ‘What’s my first lesson?    Or do you want these locals all to yourself?’

there’s a sharpened edge to her question. mickey supposes he shouldn’t have expected anything less. posed like a dagger ( or the underside of one of her canines ) it’s like she wants him to think about the taste of her —  or maybe mickey’s just paranoid — but either way, his cheeks are hot, ripe liberty apples on sharp incline of bone that parallels his jaw. he’s thankful he’s behind her as she passes through the thicket, branches held back for her as she sidles past, for it means she can’t see the heat in his face. “um…” is all he manages, bottling up in a way characteristic of his former self, honey-blonde and wide-eyed in a lunch line where he couldn’t speak but only point to what he wanted, lips stitched shut by a disquiet he couldn’t name. school teachers would later call him ‘selectively mute’ then ‘just shy’ before eventually settling on ‘sensitive’, which was perhaps the worst of the bunch, as if, somehow, mickey felt things so intensely that there were no words large enough to contain his thoughts inside of. was it not enough to simply observe, without feeling the need to contribute to the endless cacophony of chatter? striker said enough for the both of them. with his mouth shut, there was no need to worry that his voice might shake, or else be misinterpreted several degrees to the right, a translation far from his mother tongue of silence. he swallows his bottom lip, stays quiet, lest he admit it ( the confession that yes, he’s thought about tasting her in other ways ) and scare off her company altogether. still, the subtlety behind her suggestion weighs heavy on him, a veiled reminder that the two of them have shared pieces of themselves with each other that some might deem compromising ; that he finds compromising in moments like this when they’re alone and he still can’t find the words to ask her what it meant, or rather, whether it meant anything at all. 

“i don’t think it’s all that depressing,” mickey eventually replies, in response to her musings on blood. “s’what we’re all made up of, ain’t it? blood and bone. little bits o’ organ like them strings o’ sausage you get down the butcher’s stall.” he’s never been to a butcher’s shop. they get what they can discount rate at the market, produce marked down when it's past its best, and the rest they beg, borrow or steal. selena’s probably been to a county fair, the kind with a hog roast and the prize for the best pig, and all mickey could give her were the scraps of a cannon family hotpot, boiled in batch, ladled into tupperwares and frozen for later consumption. she asks if she bothers him, and he bites down on the inside of his cheek to hold back the extent to which thoughts of her nag him like a tooth gone rotten. it’s an ailment likewise caused by an addiction to sweetness, though he’d argue wanting without resolution is a fate worse than tooth decay.  “so you caught that, huh. well, rest assured, i meant it as a compliment.” it had hardly sounded like one. a mild attempt at flirting, perhaps, thought that’s never been something mickey cannon’s been good at. more times than not, his heart is spoken for before the object of his affection even knows his name, the kind of love that brews in silence, clings to the way someone adjusts their reading glasses on the brim of their nose in a café after dark, or the gentleness with which they speak to a pet as if it were a child. 

“guys like me don’t break girls like yous hearts, ma’am.” he notes, catching her gaze as he threads the line through his fishing rod and begins hunting through his carryall for a container full of bait. “i’ll leave you to do the breaking.” he sets a tupperware of crickets, worms and maggots down against the earth. “or rather, me to do the breaking and you to do the fixin’. ain’t that how it usually goes?” he’s talking about bones, though there’s other parts of him that perhaps she’d be capable of soothing. he reminds himself it’s foolish to think that a photograph, sent while lonely in a foreign land, might amount to anything more than a casual meeting of bodies, a quick fuck round the back of the hardware story with a body that felt familiar. “for a start, you’re holdin’ it wrong.” getting to his feet, mickey slings his rod aside and stations himself behind selena to take her wrist and relocate it on the rod. “so lesson one’s where to put your hands so your fingers don’t get tugged clean off.” he moves her left hand further up the rod, drawing the right one over to the gear of the reel. “left hand in front of the wheel at all times. saves that wrist some jip.”  his chin scarcely scratches the top of her head, but he can feel her hips against him when he shifts closer, shrinking himself closer to her small frame. “i rest the head o’ mine between fourth and fifth finger, but that’s just me.” once he’s adjusted her hands, his own are rendered useless, one palm dropping to rest in the alcove of her waist as a string snags in his stomach.

#⥂ mickey cannon. ╱ threads. #mickey & selena. #SELENA 001. #suggestive tw

[ofcannon]

&.     aesthetics board,     m.    cannon.    +   s.    suksai.      @ofcannon​

#⥂ mickey cannon. ╱ aesthetics. #mickey & selena.

[ofcannon]

selena.

closed.   selena’s apartment   one am.   @ofcannon​

If one were to imagine the skeleton as a house,   hers would be crooked     -   wood half-splintered,    the base of it dangling precariously over the edge of a cliff.     She had,    admittedly,    boarded over her windows and locked the doors.     She ignored the mold on the ceiling,     she ignored the smell of smoke,     she pretended to put a new coat of paint over the cracks along her walls.     War had been a long winter.     It left the attic frozen,     the basement flood from the old ice now thawing.     She supposes in one way or another,     there would always be more room here.    She hadn’t come home whole.       She had left behind too many things    -    a piece of her heart,    some ribs,    her spleen.     Things that she felt the absence of,    but ultimately survives without.       The evening was routine.    The pattern of feeding the dogs,     walking around her small apartment while checking that her blinds are closed and the door has been locked.    A consistency in security measures had developed over time.    Brutally so,    and without any option of breaking that paranoid habit.      Sleep hadn’t truly shown its full body,    and she lingered in limbo    - listening to the drop of her leaking faucet in the kitchen,    watching a moth fluttering against the drywall of her bedroom.     Trapped,    and yet determined to beat its tired wings against dead air.  

   The knock had caused a rupture in her spine,     her back bolting straight up   -   taut and aimed.    The dogs,    while trained to protect and guard against intruders,   are uncharacteristically mild-mannered.    They smell someone familiar   -   but still remain alert,   their ears perked.     A brief command to them to stay is murmured out.      Selena flicks the hallway light on,    the yellow of it dull.   The moth freed from her room is now dancing along the light’s half-moon shade.       A broom handle is also grabbed during the short walk to the door,   just a safety measure   -   a lesson of caution.     Undoing the lock and pulling the door open allows the colder air from the building’s hall to meet her cheeks   -   her loose fitting button-up almost thick enough to guard her from the chill.     ‘Mickey?’   The name comes out with warm disbelief,    broom handle dropped to the side.    A flash of sweat,   however,    weasels its way down her spine at the sight.    Mickey’s face registering with the lighting from the hallway,   as well as the blood.   Blood,  early signs of bruising,    the thick scent of saline and metal in the air.     The way the shadows hit his jawline makes him seem almost sinister,     a dead man walking.    But she moves with an involuntary knowledge,    an instinct to heal    -   albeit the strange form of panic tightening itself inside her stomach.       Fingers wrap along his wrist to pull him gently through the doorway,    orders already falling out with the soft otherworldly display of deep solicitude.         ‘Come in,    let me fix you up.      How much pain are you in right now?    I do have some high strength pain pills that might help.    I just need to see what I’m working with.     Sit at the table,   please.    The light’s the best in the kitchen.’

when you grew up thinking you were unlovable, a part of that always lingered. it made you look for love in places where it didn’t exist — in the glue between book pages, in affairs that only made you lonelier, in the way a body could take a scab and knit it back into something human. perhaps that was all their underground boxing ring was — boys who hadn’t been shown the right kind of affection and now sought it in the smack of bone when fist met jaw, when knee met stomach, when forearm clotheslined a jugular. tonight had been rougher than usual. everyone was dealing with their own brand of shit, alev with sparrow, fletcher with something unsaid that knitted together a crease between his eyes. the hits had come hard and fast, lawless in their brawling. a graze like a rope burn stretched over his shoulder. his chest was gashed and bruised in the shape of a footprint, blood beneath the skin. skull had clocked the concrete floor in a way that scared the others enough to suggest he get it checked out. still, a kind of fear existed in mickey when it came to hospitals. when you were a cannon, you went to hospital to be born and to die — anything else, they’d deal with their own damn selves — but perhaps he’d allow himself the tenderness of selena’s hands, which would be slightly preferable to striker roughly bundling gauze over his wounds.

he second guesses himself the moment his knuckles have rapped against the door. would she think ill of him, turning up like this, late at night, thrumming with adrenaline and and speckled with blood. there’s hardly time for his doubts to settle, for when she opens the door, broom in hand, mickey’s hit with a pang of amused relief and he can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it. “jesus, selena. a broom?” his laugh comes bubbling out of him like melted cheese spilling from the sides of a toastie, a rare luxury in the cannon household. “i mean, what was y’all planning on doing, exactly… gonna sweep me to death?” her hand around his wrist stoppers any jokes, a gulp swallowed as she tugs him inside, the warmth of her small hand against his skin. he tries not to notice where her shorts cut off at her thighs or the shape of her beneath them. “i’m not—” he swallows a gulp, clearing his throat. “no, it’s not the pain so much just… well the boys back at the club were mighty worried i’d got a concussion.” usually it’s striker taking hits to the head, with all his reckless charades fighting bulls, but mickey had hit the floor in such a way it had sent him thoughtless for a second. “and i got some little battle scars. thought maybe i should get ‘em stitched. last time i got the cellulitis.” he follows selena through the hall, mouth lifting at her instructions. “yes, boss.” something about being told what to do by a woman stirs him low in the stomach. making his way into the kitchen, mickey takes a pew at the table, feeling overgrown in contrast to her delicate possessions, a mug he’d surely finish in one gulp, the wooden spoons his hands would surely dwarf. pulling at the collar of his shirt, mickey shoots selena a cursory glance. “i’m fine, really—” he starts, forewarning her of the mess of watercolours that he can feel blooming across his shoulder and back, the gash that bisects his chest. with a twist of his lips, mickey yanks the shirt up and over his head, the fabric coarse with blood as he drops it against his lap, head half-hung in shame. “looks worse than it is.”

#⥂ mickey cannon. ╱ threads. #selena 002. #mickey & selena.

[ofcannon]

we've talked about this TOO much but: while selena was overseas she sent letters to the cannons, but mostly to mickey !!! <333 photos too, but THAT'S ANOTHA VIBE. also mickey was the one who got selena into classic country <333

hi !!! this is so true. and i think while selena may have developed a fondness for mickey while she was writing to him from her army placement, initially the letters came addressed to mickey because of the three cannon brothers, he's the most proficient reader. lance has dyslexia, something he's struggled with since childhood, and while striker should be able to read, he has vision problems and should probably be wearing glasses, but since they never go to the doctors he just continues to fumble his way through. mickey, on the other hand, attended school long enough to learn how to read and write, and as a child with a speech impediment he found solace in words, admired the eloquence in books that his own tongue could never manage. as a kid, he particularly liked dickens for his rich depictions of characters and tales of street urchins living on next to nothing making a way for themselves in a world that was set against them. mickey kept all the letters selena wrote to him in a drawer, would often spend hours meditating on his response, and now one of his chicks is named 'etta james' after selena's favourite blues singer. other chicks include johnny cash (striker's favourite country singer) and glen campbell (mickeys) as well as four chicks named after members of the swedish pop group ABBA.

#mickey & selena. #⥂ mickey cannon. ╱ musings. #headcanons.

[ofcannon]

MICKEY & STRIKER: it’s no secret that striker is going grey. every few weeks the boys help top up each other’s dye jobs — mickey’s blonde to striker’s brunette — with gloves stolen from the gas station and the cheapest box dye available at the pharmacy. underneath the ‘mahogany’ slop striker is likely silver all over, but that remains between him and mickey.

YEAH !!! we've talked about this before but it's so true, bestie..... i think dying striker's silvery strands dark from such a young age (striker started going silver silver in his late 20s i believe? and they'd likely do it in the bathroom of a gas station or whatever motel they could find while they were 'roadtripping' / homeless) was maybe what prompted mickey to experiment with a new look? like he was honey blonde / mousy brown growing up, but when he realised how not-that-hard or scientific dyeing was, he was like fuck it lets slap some peroxide on.... why not.... while at first he probably just whacked it on and hoped (and probably singed quite a lot of his hair off in the process) now i think mickey's probably secretly quite into it.... maybe he's even watched a brad mondo video or two on how to bleach your hair without totally fucking it.

#mickey & striker. #headcanons. #⥂ mickey cannon. ╱ musings.

[ofcannon]

elias.

to: anyone location: roswell community medical

Elias thanked the nurse, turning to give Emma a hug goodbye for the afternoon. “Take care of yourself,” he smiled, making his way to the door of her room. “I’ll be by again tomorrow morning and bring you those Razzles you like.” “Oh my god, you were able to find them?” “Oh definitely, Starlight has all those ancient candy brands.” “Retro,” Emma grinned, “I’ll see you tomorrow.” “Retro, right. Yeah, see you tomorrow, kid.” With a grin, he waved a hand and made his way out into the desolate hall of the hospital, heading right and turning a corner before finding himself facing a sign against the stairwell doors: Stairs Closed, Please Use Elevator. And just like that, his heart began to race. It’d been, what? Seven? Eight years, since he last took an elevator? Typically, he avoided anything less than two metres in width but how the hell else would he get down now? 

“Okay,” he breathed, his voice quiet as the doors opened with a ding. It’s just a ten-second trip. One floor. Not a big deal. It’ll go by in a flash. He stepped inside, not noticing the other person in the elevator in the slightest, his mind only going into a minor panic as the doors slid shut in front of him. It wasn’t until he heard soft shuffling that he spoke, “um, ground level, please.”

       hospital made mickey cannon queasy. when you were a cannon, you went to hospital to be born and to die. everything else, they’d solve at home, splints fashioned from a wooden spoon and the strip of an old pair of trousers, home-brewed maladies of crushed up painkillers mixed into a shot glass of whiskey. mickey had gotten a particularly nasty gash down his forearm at friday night’s brawl — nothing he wasn’t used to, being an active member of roswell’s notorious underground fight club — but selena had made him promise to get it checked out, and he found it hard to say no to her. “sure thing, boss,” mickey noted, gruffly, his coarse thumb obediently pushing against the round button that signalled the ground floor. foot tapping against his worn out boot soles, mickey fished a cigarette from his pocket and slid it between his lips, oblivious to the ‘no smoking inside’ sign, or the fact that it was a hospital. “y’mind if i light up...?” as the doors of the elevator drew closed, he fished in the pocket of his combat pants for a lighter. “i been in the waiting room a damn near three hour.”

#⥂ mickey cannon. ╱ threads. #mickey & elias. #elias 001.

[ofcannon]

selena.

closed.   frazier woods,   early morning.     @ofcannon

It had taken many years for Selena to complete her metamorphosis.          From girl to god,      from woman to snake.     Perhaps there had always been that sapling inside of her.       A red oak tree that demanded to become too big for her skin,       too resentful of that containment she had once restricted it to.       Her story was always about hunger and wanting more.     Mickey’s story,    however,    seemed to always own the room.     It bled from the walls only out of discretion and mystery.    He held more than kindness between those teeth.     For a man so quiet,   he often was loud in restlessness.    She is trained to notice subtle details,    those shifts between moments that are miniscule to some,   but a whole animal to dissect to her.     Her boots sink in the shallow mud puddle,   the wetness pooling against the soles.    The morning was silent,   a stillness that held the world with a delicate dedication as if one were holding a baby bird.      Her eyes steady on Mickey’s back as he leads them towards the fishing spot he had said a few words about.    Not one to pry into those who keep their heart buried far beneath the surface,    she often had trouble predicting his actions.    However,     for a man who seemed to hold most people at arm’s length,   he had a soft skinned heart.    The organ was only wrapped up in peach fuzz and honey when he was around a certain company.   A sweetness to him that was genuine and sheepish most times.      The black-flies must also think this as they’ve followed them quite loyally.     The faint buzzing around her neck and ears causes her to whip her palm out with a mild attempt at swatting them away,   a laugh following shortly with a shake of her head.  ‘I don’t want to alarm you,   Mickey,   but I think we’re being attacked.’    The tease is loosely gathered as she exhales the words out,   gaze scanning their surroundings with mild curiosity.     The breeze is humid,    although there’s a few moments of coolness from the previous night’s temperature that eases against her warmed cheeks.  ‘How often do you come out here?     You seem so comfortable.    I’m half-expecting you to tell me this entire area belongs to you.’

          silence was currency when you were a cannon. you could exchange an absence of language for a quiet life, stick to the shadows, avoid the hits by keeping your lips tightly laced like a fair maiden’s bodice.  mickey cannon had learned from a young age to hold his tongue between his teeth and suffer the mouth ulcers. unlike his brothers, it wasn’t his mouth that got mickey into trouble ( unless he was kissing the milkman’s daughter ) but rather the babinski reflex of his fists whenever someone he loved was threatened. he looked for threats in places they didn’t exist, back to the wall so he could never be snuck up on, sizing men up at a glance. i could take him. stephen cannon was a phantom that haunted them still, almost twenty-five years since they’d evaded that redneck piece of scum  ( a thumbtack stuck in the bottom of a shoe ) and yet his iron grip lingered ; in the rustle of curtains, in the creak of a floorboard, in the sharp slam of a door, the sound of it enough to put the fear of god in any god-fearing man’s throat. cannons didn’t believe in gods, not when they’d been raised by a man so monstrous that even hell itself would spit him back out, for what kind of god could create something so evil with the same hand he made soft-headed chicks? mickey wore his quiet nature like a badge of honour, though he was capable of tenderness and bloodshed in equal measure. he could beat a man within an inch of his life and with those same hands wipe an eyelash from a woman’s face and present it for her to wish on. 

          selena was one such woman for whom he’d tear a fella limb from limb if he so much as looked at her the wrong way — not that she’d ask him to. that was another thing about the cannons: their chivalry, while honourable, was archaic in it’s maintenance of patriarchal values, door-holding, chair-pulling, hanky-catching antics that the likes of mona colby and her feminist friends found backwards. “y’all ain’t never heard that song?” mickey responded, holding back a bundle of cattails to carve selena a clear passage through the wetlands, his free hand swatting at the buffalo gnats. “y’know… shoo, fly, don’t bother me. i belong to somebody.” mama used to sing it when the nights got rough, her sweet melodies drowning out the sound of a bull in china shop that thundered through the trailer in search of ‘where the hell that bitch woman had hidden the damn fags’. “i reckon they like the smell of your blood. mine ain’t all that peachy, but i imagine yours must smell like a tall glass of ribena.” ribena had been a currency in the cannon household too, a rare luxury in a home where the taps spouted water the colour of rust. not that mickey would want to drink selena’s blood — unless she asked him to, in which case, she could tie him up and call him nosferatu because he’d suck at her neck until the sun came up. a shrug was his only response to her question, sheepish suddenly as he slotted the fishing lines under the crook of his elbow and followed her into the marsh. “you visit a place enough, you get to know the locals...” an old toad he’d affectionately named bertie was a regular visitor to his fishing haunts, often ribitting his praise for a fine catch, the sound low in the swell of his neck and wise as a grandfather clock. “i don’t bother them, they don’t bother me neither, though i can’t say the same about you.” he’d bite, smirk half-obscured by the fish hook clamped like a toothpick between his teeth as he laced her rod with fishing line, held a finger to his lips as the skittered through the tall grass to the place where the rocks met the river, the marsh petering off into a clear dewy spring.

#u say dnt worry abt matching with length..... and here's me..... #⥂ mickey cannon. ╱ threads. #mickey & selena. #selena 001. #blood tw #vampire tw #assault tw #domestic violence tw