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quillheel · 6 months

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"Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while." (Harry to Kim)

They’d been standing outside of the Martinaise bookstore ( Crime, Romance, and Biographies of Famous People ) for upwards of 20 minutes by now, not entering, not perusing, the time occupied exclusively with the Detective’s staring; eyes clouded the way they become when something occupies him, the edging-on-vacant look he sometimes acquires when he looks up into the cold sky and murmurs under his breath. Locations. Distances. A gridwork of nerves under the city streets; or rather what they were built atop; that despite the efforts of the shivering, terrible absence of memory in his brain persisted in reaching him. Useless information heralded as jewels. The names of streets. Seeing from another angle.

For the last 5 of those 20, Kim was beginning to worry on if Harry had suffered some kind of stroke, perhaps caught between the conscious and unconsciousness, the way fainting seemed to be becoming a habit for him ( or at least, so he’d learnt. ) and his body simply hadn’t fallen, knees locked, keeping him stable. There’d been the temptation to gently nudge his shoulder, a tap to see the structural integrity under that disco blazer, on those snakeskin boots, but he answers before he fully settles into it & the consequences it may harbor; the words soft and raw like fruit fuzz left to rot, quiet on the wind, and all the Lieutenant can do is nod sagely, peering over at whatever it’d been to occupy him so thoroughly. Nothing interesting to Kim, maybe, but all encompassing to the other. Some days, Kitsuragi considers spending entirely on dissecting- ━ no. not dissection. he would not to kill it. ━ considers spending entirely on understanding what it is that goes on inside his head. Part of him whispers that to do so would be to ruin the magic.

Another part of him offers the refute of ‘I wouldn’t know’ in answering Harry, but he decides against that, too. It was too critical, too good at shutting things down. I wouldn’t know is to say I don’t know and I have nothing to say so can we please move on? ━ at least sometimes, it was, to him. Too vulnerable. Too much. Too little.

Kim adjusts his glasses, removing them. " I suppose that is true, Detective. " he relents, almost, but curious eyes give way to his unprovoking answer; an unspoken question of continue?; as the Lieutenant adds on, offering more as he cleans the lenses of the water built up from snow with a handkerchief. " Something about the eternity of a love that can persist past everything, even death, is an appealing thought to many people… " ━━ he tries not to study Harry as he says that. as if anticipating, as if proving himself correct.

#━ ♔ cardinals with snow-brushed wings : asks.#━ ♔ Souvenez-vous la prochaine fois; Que vient la neige et le fracas / On n'va pas tous mourir ━ KIM/HARRY: playedbetter #playedbetter #MUSE / Kim Kitsuragi #━ ♔ to jump from anywhere & make it home : threads.#━ ♔ you sing but only the pavement listens : ic.#disco elysium //

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quillheel · 5 months

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@playedbetter // lyric starters; without mythologies by the weakerthans.

Maybe the scariest part of seeing Kim with a fever, hot-cold all the time and aching, was less about the fever itself; it was about seeing how that sickness pried back the composure on him like skinning a beetle of its shell, it was less the times he was asleep and more when he was awake; often irritated beneath a reluctance to engage at all and murmuring barely there mostly through the breath of wheezing, it was more about the times he murmured at all.

The Lieutenant's apartment is clean, and maybe it would've reminded you of the Pox if not for the fact you were allowed within it's walls where many weren't, and the various small details that filled itself in on it's own lived in qualities. Clean but imperfect, and unable to escape from the fact of the city you both lived in ━ Revachol whispering on the paint cracked window-sills as summer heat leaked in through them, on the smell of maybe something rotten. gasoline. vaguely something plantlike, like trees bending their leaves up to break up the noise.

There are exactly 11 trees along Kim's street. Maybe you would've noticed in the way here, or maybe not, since Kim invited Harry over after struggling; frustratingly inattentive; throughout the day on a case, and the first time Kim had handed over his place at the wheel of the Kineema so willingly since the beginning of it's service at the station ( it might've been the station's vehicle, one he was lucky to have been able to take with him when transferring over to station 41 after a major amount of string-pulling, ass kissing, and excuses about repairs, but in the end it was always Kim's baby ) to Harry. ━ so naturally, there were many other things to notice when one is entrusted with the golden ticket of a sick man almost begging him not to crash the damn thing than the amount of trees on Kim's street. But there are still 11 trees, and one way or another, you'd gotten home.

And in this home, Kim lays on his back on his couch, glasses removed and eyes covered with a cool wet cloth as a radio plays some random station quietly enough to be unintrusive but still filling a white noise ━ something classical, or at the very least, instrumental. the voices of the piece if you focused on it no more than a distant kind of cloud that wasps over hazily on compressed air waves ━ and occasionally he murmurs to himself, quiet and voice shot. this was the scary part, what he'd say. what it'd tell you. this was the scary part, to hear him through the softest electrical hum...

" si je pouvais, je ferais de toi une rivière déchaînée avec des rapides en colère alimentés en pluie, pour que tu puisses toujours serpenter et pouvoir toujours t'enfuir… " ━ breathe in. ( if i could, i would make you a raging river with angry rapids supplied with rain, so you could always meander, and forever be able to run away… )

sings to himself, rather, here. sings to you? the language hangs on his tongue, syllable after syllable.

" sans lutter… contre les mythes mal interprétés, contre la douleur… " ━ breathe out. ( without contending… with myths wrongly interpreted, with pain… )

he does, sing to you. the only person you can remember who would, regardless of intention. he breathes with the music, and with it comes over with the terror of an honesty so grandiose it becomes small again; marble-like; like an unfulfilled wish he offers out, downy feathered, anyways, because the sentiment matters more than whatever it is now. maybe he doesn't even realize he says it out loud to begin with, but he does, whispers in the gentle shuffle of the apartment's small spaces, composure a dream he hasn't woken into, rarely; rarely, a heart on his sleeve. ( like speaking in your sleep. like honesty when you don't realize it, laid back on the worn cushioning of a couch, allowing himself not to see, allowing himself to merely be, be there. to drive him home. trusting. trusting you. )

#i did NOT mean for this to be this long but these mfs make me emo anyway so BHKBR #also little bit obsessed by how the second lyric translates as 'without fighting against; against misinterpreted myths; against pain'#bc its just got a VIBE but yeah <333 them <333 (the song itself is in english but Kim murmuring it in french made me emotional so. womp BHK #MUSE / Kim Kitsuragi #ROLEPLAY / Kim Kitsuragi #playedbetter #━ ♔ Souvenez-vous la prochaine fois; Que vient la neige et le fracas / On n'va pas tous mourir ━ KIM/HARRY: playedbetter #━ ♔ to jump from anywhere & make it home : threads.#━ ♔ you sing but only the pavement listens : ic.#sickness //#de //

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quillheel · 5 months

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☕ (My Harry & your Kim)

Send me “ ☕ “ for my muse to drink tea uniquely flavored after your muse, and I’ll tell you what my muse tastes! // accepting!

When the thermos is passed, Kim is dubiously hesitant to sip its contents. Glances spared into the dark metal container where a thousand tiny lights reflect back up at him off the angles of glitter that seem to consume the liquid, bouncing off the sharp lines of his glasses, highlighting the ridges of his face; cheekbone meeting upper-eye meeting the crease of his nose between. He questions, and the answer he receives is likely as inane but incredulously trustworthy ━ which is to say, only Kim would trust it ━ and he is prodded to drink. A sigh, a murmuring of If you're trying to poison me, at least have an alibi… before it's raised like a chalice to the lips and, tentatively, he drinks.

He swears the glitter clogs his through the moment he does, and he chokes. ( although, the choking may not all be from the glitter. ) Like congealed blood, glitter clinging, he can feel the pieces cut micro-ribbons of flesh down his esophagus as it slides down in a wet mass, leaving behind it a terrible feeling of glitter lining the space between his lungs down, down, down. The taste is indescribable ━ sharp and salty and sweet and bitter and tangy all at once, apricots and rotten fruit and alcohol, the taste of sweat and iron and cinnamon, unpleasantly cold at first which becomes kinder as it soothes the roughness of the throat's wounds before the heat hits the way habanero in coffee does. like dark chocolate, like stale cake frosting, like pleasantly unpleasant soreness, sweet-sour wine, cloying cheap children's medicine, nausea-inducing cigarette smoke.

Indescribable the way cubic measurements of atmosphere containing updraft are indescribable, not indescribable the way metrics too large and too small become nothing. indescribable like space, like music, like sea.

Like God, he thinks, like Innocence. he corrects; Like God. Like Pale. Innocence is a dead language they've been trying to read, and neither of them, neither of them, were born enough to be that again. But maybe they were, once. Like Pale. Like dreaming. Like oblivion. ( Apricots still linger in it like fruit floating on saltwater, fermenting on waves, cracked wide as geodes and spilling guts, spilling light. Beneath it is an oil spill 300 kilometers long from a model of motor carriage that has not been made since the day he was born, mingling, separate, beneath, above. Like tainting it, like swallowing it whole, like becoming more by virtue of what he gives, by no virtue at all. ) Like God, he thinks, like Innocence.

Kitsuragi's composure returns to him, and with the embarrassment of a freshman being handed a drink he couldn't handle, he screws the thermos shut again, and passes it back with the more guttural-than-usual sound of clearing his throat. He pulls off a glove and swipes the flesh of a hand over his mouth, bottom lip coated in the shine of something like lip-gloss beneath the chunky square glitter clinging to it. Stubbornly, pieces remain regardless of how hard he scrubs it away, caught in the cracks between lips, before he sighs, slips a glove back on, and resolves to chew on the skin for the rest of the day, if only to hide it, until he can attempt to better extract it somewhat mournfully with the bristles of a toothbrush. A small part of him asks him to let it stay, and the rest of him refuses. A moments consideration, but little else ━ at least for now, anyway, at least for now.

As the flavor lingers on his tongue like an unwelcome guest, progressively, it shifts. never does it lose the sharpened edges, the quality of chaos, the almost fermented kind of age & simultaneous unblended freshness to it, all mixed together and separate all at once, but over time it mellows, perhaps, or maybe Kim just gets used to it. the acidic highs mesh better with the taste of artificial fruit and the heat lends itself as he considers it to the taste of cheap coffee and dark chocolate. grape sugar with the salt and bitter not better but a different taste than they would be alone, iron manageable with the undertone of something other than the blood ━ maybe it becomes more palatable the longer its in his mouth, accustomed like an acquired taste king of all acquired tastes, or maybe it just burns itself out the longer it's left to mix with something other than itself. Saliva like a neutralizer to however many medications he can feel, chalky, on the underside of his tongue.

The heat subsides and the bitterness erodes, slowly and fast all at once, and a smoother kind of flavor emerges from beneath all of it. soft lime and distant haze of honey and a kind of watered down cocktail, no longer sharp with alcohol, but cold anyway. like something hidden, like something suffocated, like something that couldn't afford to come out unless it knew, really knew, it wasn't going to be rejected. the craze of the rest does not die, but the aftertaste offers a different kind of kindness, like hangover medication after a bad night. charcoal pill, cool water, dimmed lights. ( acts of love, acts of not wanting to see someone dear in pain, acts of staying with them; staying with them; regardless of how wretched they were the night before. people cant get that sad, she said to you once, or you thought she did, but people will love you enough to kneel at your bedside and hold your sweaty hand and close the blinds so the world can't see you for just a little while more. people will love you and be loved and try to save you, and maybe you cannot be saved, no one can, there is no messiah waiting at the foot of your bed to cure you, the world just doesn't work like that, and you can't keep waiting for it, but people will love you enough to wash the stains out from your favorite shirt so you can keep it a little longer.

people who bring cold cloths when you are sick and sweet coffee when you need something to keep you warm, people who can't save you but can in the same strokes; where it's not saving you, it's giving you the means to save yourself. people who work you through it as you lift the stones you're building castles out of, hoping, praying that you don't smash them down again. people who stand proud for you at the checkmarks in the road, and tell you that you're doing good, and wait for you when you can't keep running, or even when you turn back and decide it's easier to give up than to sink in deeper. people you've treated bad before, and cannot stay forever, and cannot save you, but they love you enough to stay a little longer. they love you enough to hold you when you need it, and hold you down when you need that too, and make the hard calls you'll hate them for. they love you hard enough that it turns into hate when it's fed the wrong things, giving dogs chocolate, but they love you, love you, love you. )

it soothes pain of his throat, and Kim does not concede to the fact he finds himself wanting another sip, another shot of chaos and that sweeter smoother aftertaste, knowing what he's putting in his body and deciding to come back anyway, wondering, but he admits; quietly to himself as he holds the pieces of glitter in his hands like the shed skin of a disco ball in his little bathroom in the Whirling that night; that maybe the pain is worth the reward. that maybe he's crazy, but maybe they both need a little sanity, a little less, a little something else.

( kneeling at your bedside when you are too afraid to sleep, he traces the scars nickering your hands, and cleans his glasses, and slowly; slowly; the apricots stop mattering. as you notice a little more how the oil spill gleams on the crest of waves, as the oil spill becomes something different. )

-100 HP. +660 HP.

#i care them So much i go a little silly!!!!!#━ ♔ cardinals with snow-brushed wings : asks.#playedbetter #MUSE / Kim Kitsuragi #ROLEPLAY / Kim Kitsuragi #alcohol //#medication //#food //#injury //#blood //#religion //#ask to tag //#de //#smoking //#drugs //#━ ♔ Souvenez-vous la prochaine fois; Que vient la neige et le fracas / On n'va pas tous mourir ━ KIM/HARRY: playedbetter #ender dont look

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